Hybrid Space is the focus of the new edition of Digital Leaders in Architecture, a platform providing innovative food for thought for architects.
Interview & Lecture Hybrid Space @ Digital Leaders in Architecture, SchĂĽco International KG, Berlin, 1 July 2022
Digital
Leaders
in
Architecture
by
SchĂĽco International KG
The “20 Minutes” format by and for digital pioneers in architecture.
A session of 20 minutes. No more and no less. In entertaining web sessions, Digital Leaders in Architecture provides architects with innovative food for thought and answers the key questions in the interaction between digitization and architecture.
Today, hybrid (combining architectural-urban and digital) space is the dominant space of social interaction. Hybrid space is at the heart of the Hybrid Space Lab’s long-standing commitment and experience. Starting from the merging of physical places and digital networks into hybrid spaces, the concept of hybridity of the lab has evolved to address the hybrid, intertwined realities of nature and technology.
Due to increasing digitalization, architects have to design holistic models in order to be able to prioritize and organize information when entering data. Architects should develop creative future designs that integrate the diverse dimensions, facets and effects of space – those of the physical and the digital world as well as the built and natural environment.
Due to increasing digitization and the ubiquitous digital transformation of processes as well as ever more sophisticated technologies, the work environment of architects is undergoing dramatic changes. In light of these changes, architects should pause and reflect on their role. And possibly also redefine them.
Prof. Elizabeth Sikiaridi is an architect and – together with Prof. Frans Vogelaar – founder of Hybrid Space Lab. “Hybrid” stands for interdisciplinarity, “Space” for spatial expertise and “Lab” for the innovative way of working, a transdisciplinary design approach, where city, nature and the digital are thought of and developed together.
Professor Elizabeth Sikiaridi has been teaching design in the landscape architecture course at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Technical University of Ostwestfalen-Lippe since 1997, where she heads the international master’s course “Sustainable Landscape Design and Development”. Elizabeth was born in London and grew up in Athens. She studied architecture and urban planning at the École d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris and at the Technical University of Darmstadt (diploma with distinction). She worked in the architectural office of GĂĽnther Behnisch & Partner in Stuttgart on the projects “Extension of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt/Main” (responsible for the competition: 1st prize) and “German Bundestag, Bonn”. She was a research associate at the Technical University of Berlin.
Digital Leaders in Architecture, SchĂĽco International KG
How is the digital transformation influencing the architectural  scene and work environment?
What changes and upheavals are still ahead of us? And how will all this affect the features of our cities and the quality of our habitats?
Digital Leaders in Architecture provides architects with a platform for future scenarios and their embedment in reality. In 20-minute engaging web sessions, opinion leaders from the architectural field are invited to leverage their expertise in combination with digital future trends, answering the key questions in the interplay between digitization and architecture. The program Digital Leaders in Architecture is presented by SchĂĽco and Gira.
Hybrid Space Lab’s work is at the forefront of the questions that interrogate contemporary life – and the quickening pace of technological advancement and digitalization. Deeply occupied with the intersection, interaction, and negotiation between physical and digital spaces, Hybrid Space Lab emphasizes the necessity of collaborative, inclusive, and inter-disciplinary approaches to future-proof architecture and society.
Crucially, by means of increasing and pervasive digitalisation of processes and increasingly sophisticated technologies, the field – and the very notion – of architecture is witnessing dramatic changes.
In addition to reckoning with the integrative power of software that can automate the negotiation between plans from different fields of expertise for any project, architects face the challenge of redefining their role in the face of such changes in the industry.
If anything, the role of architects must rise to the challenge to feed information systems and algorithms with carefully selected – almost curated – inputs and data. Only in this way machine-learning can be applied to planning with increasing sophistication and efficacy. More specifically, the values of architecture can enrich and shape the criteria for feeding AI, making sure that the former are at the very core of what machines learn there.
Therefore, the role of the architect becomes increasingly visionary, in a way. Architects need holistic, all-encompassing concepts and models that allow them to prioritize and organize information to develop comprehensive and creative visions for the future.
Therefore, architects must have an overview that integrates all dimensions, facets and effects of space: physical and digital, artifact and nature. Only in this way can architecture as a discipline and competence maintain and increase its relevance in the age of machine-powered and processed planning.
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