The department of architectural theory, RWTH Aachen, welcomes you to the:
 

Aachen Monday Evening Lectures 2008/2009

Homo Faber. The Fabrication of Architecture
Mondays 19:45-21:15
FO 1 Karman Auditorium, RWTH Aachen, Eilfschornsteinstr. 15, Aachen, Germany
 
For over thirty years, the Aachen Monday Evening Lectures (Aachener Montagabendgespräche) have been a central event in the life of the architecture faculty at Aachen University (RWTH Aachen) and have been appreciated by the public at large. The series has featured such prominent guests as Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Gottfried Böhm und Julius Posener.
The architectural theory department, directed since 2007 by Professor Axel Sowa, is pursuing the tradition following a thematic approach.
This year's theme is Homo Faber. The Fabrication of Architecture.
The focus will be on questions of making and building and their link to deisgn. Pioneering architects, craftsmen and representatives of the industrial sector from Great Britain, the USA, Brazil, Austria, Luxemburg and Germany will discuss and illustrate the relationship between buildings as a whole and their components and attempt to redefine architectural endeavour according to its fast-evolving yet constant cooperation with craft and industry. The lectures will span such varied processes as earth building techniques and the realisation of complex geometries through the use of Scripting and CAD-CAM tools.
What is the architect's attitude towards the craftsman, the worker, industry? How are decisions taken? What is the potential of digital processes? Where is there room for innovation?
Answers and more questions on Mondays, from December to early February, in Aachen (Germany):

1st December: Martin Rauch

Born in 1958 in the Vorarlberg, Austria, Martin Rauch has been developing new potentials for an apparently archaic building material: earth. His success in introducing rammed earth in the most contemporary of designs and his experiments with prefabricated earth walls have ensured his reputation as a pioneer craftsman and  entrepreneur. Although the three words - Mud - Clay - Earth - are more or less equivalent, for me they each have a symbolic character. Generally, I would describe mud from the point of view of building technique as a material for construction, clay as a symbol for giving form through an artistic process and earth as an emblem for ecological and economic virtues. In Rammed Earth, Lehm und Architektur, (Otto Kapfinger, Birkhäuser 2002)

Sponsors : Reiff student fees committee, Claytec, US airways, Bund deutscher Architekten Aachen
 
Further Information : http://theorie.arch.rwth-aachen.de/
 
Architect DPLG, M.A. Ariane Wilson
DEPARTMENT FOR THE THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE RWTH AACHEN
Templergraben 92,   D-52056 Aachen
 
fon          +49-(0)241-80-93592
fax           +49-(0)241-80-92572        
wilson@theorie.arch.rwth-aachen.de