The Media Architecture Biennale is the world’s premier event on media architecture, urban interaction design, digital placemaking, urban media art and urban informatics.
As we design and adapt new technologies, in turn these technologies shape our cities. What future scenarios are implied in today’s urban technologies? And how can we shape our technologies to respond to their surroundings, contributing to cities that are both socially and ecologically sustainable?
Originally, media architecture was most concerned with the integration of displays and interactive installations into architectural structures, such as media facades and urban screens. Over the years, the discipline has grown much broader, as new technologies such as digital platforms and smart city technologies have increasingly made their way into the experience, management and design of cities.
None of these technologies brought into the city are neutral enablers, mere decorative structures or just simple market places connecting demand and supply in fields as diverse as energy and transport to commerce and leisure. They are built upon numerous spoken and unspoken assumptions about urban life, each with their own implications for both social relations as well as their effect on the natural ecosystem.It is time therefore for the discipline of media architecture to address the implied futures of new technologies.
MAB20 calls for media architectures that move beyond the mere spectacular; as well as beyond the design of individualized services comforting human customers. MAB20 calls for media architectures and urban interaction that dare to take on a more-than-human approach: aiming at the well-being of the natural ecosystem as a whole; For urban media art and design that bring implicit and explicit bias within technology and culture to light, and provide the means for ongoing discussion, debate, and societal change; For digital platforms that strengthen citizen’s digital rights in democratic societies.
Calls for Participation will be published in the fall of 2019. Check this page, or sign up for our mailing list to make sure you won’t miss them.
In January 2020, MAB is organizing a Winter School with Archis/VOLUME & Stephan Petermann/MANN in collaboration with Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences; Master Digital Design Sandberg Instituut, Akademie voor Bouwkunst, Design Centre Amsterdam, and Amsterdam Creative Industries Network
It’s a four-day research workshop with the ambition to do a reality-check of the intersection of technology, architecture and urban planning, using AMO and Volume research methods.
The Urban Interfaces group at Utrecht University (co-organizer of MAB20), Impakt and Leonardo invite you for a mini-symposium celebarting the launch of the online Urban Interfaces Special Issue on Leonardo Electronic Almanac, on October 30th 17:00 in Utrecht.
The issue approaches interfaces in a contemporary urban context, and explores the different ways in which situated media, art, and performances create, intervene in, and transform urban spaces.
The Master Digital Design and the Media Architecture Biennale 2020 are thrilled to host Peter Dalsgaard for an meetup about digitally-augmented public spaces and knowledge-sharing.
How to design the library of the future, bringing together its functions as (digital) knowledge exchange and physical site for communities? In a recent redesign of the Public Library in Aarhus, Denmark, the Centre for Digital Creativity involved citizens and stakeholders in imagining the spaces and infrastructures that support and augment community building.
Join us on 3-4 October, 9.30-17.30 at the Urban Play Design Camp, organized with the AUAS Digital Society School and the Trust in Play European School for Urban Game Design, taking place at Garage Notweg.
The playcamp is a 2-days practical workshop to discover the techniques for creating games for cities. Students, practitioners, community organizers, activists, artists, researchers are all welcome. Follow this link for more info and to sign up.
Filippo Lodi is Head of Innovation and Knowledge Management at UNStudio, an architecture firm at the forefront of developments concerning the rise of data technology, sensorial technology, and artificial intelligence.
Jason Bruges Studio has become internationally renowned for producing innovative installations, interventions, and ground-breaking works. This practice involves creating interactive spaces and surfaces that sit between the world of architecture, site-specific installation art, and interaction design. Considered a pioneer of this hybrid in-between space, Jason has subsequently paved the way for a new genre of design studios, artists and designer-makers.
The Biennale focuses on media artists and designers from across a range of disciplines (interaction design, urban design, public spaces, architecture and digital design), as well as on researchers and parties from business and governments involved in the development of public spaces. The MAB 2020 programme is anticipated to attract around 250 international professional visitors.
