‘The idea that architecture belongs in one place and technology belongs in another is comparatively new in history, and its effect on architecture, which should be the most complete of the arts of mankind, has been crippling.’

Reyner Banham,
The architecture of the well-tempered environment

The history of architecture is fundamentally based on the inclusion of ‘open-source’ models and technologically driven innovation. Arguably, until only very recently, the contemporary culture of architecture has resisted the notion that technological, environmental, social and aesthetic performance converge as architecture. As Banham’s critique points out, understanding building as a series of independent qualities does not generate a ‘complete’ architecture.

The BUILDSMART2011 Turin Workshop will be a platform for the development of an integral interdependent approach to the relationship between technology, ecology, the social and the aesthetic in architectural innovation. The workshop will explore the important grassroots Arduino and Fablab movements which have quickly become a global phenomenon. Through the exploration and experimentation with additive technological systems that can be constructed into complex sensor driven and reactive systems the students will develop open-source systems of environmental modulation in architectural surfaces. Additionally the students will test their models within the Fablab Italia on exhibit at the ‘Stazione Futuro’ in Turin, Italy.