The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2017-2018 :: Nic Clear :: Professorial Inaugural Lecture F.U.N.: Future Urban Networks

  • Thursday 30th November 2017, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

We are currently at a moment of profound technological change and while there is a great deal of hype surrounding the Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno technologies, the revolutionary significance of these developments on our cities is either not fully grasped, or seen in the context of dystopian scenarios of totalitarian enslavement and runaway grey goo. In this lecture Professor Nic Clear will try and outline how our fears of technology are tied to a variety of nostalgic concepts of the city and an ideology of technophobia, he will contrast this more positivist readings of technology some of which are taken from the discourse of speculative fiction. Professor Clear will then describe a series of urban projects that speculate on the implementation of the NBIC technologies in a post-singularity, post scarcity world that questions the laissez-faire attitudes that underpin much of contemporary society.

Professor Nic Clear is an architect, writer and curator, he is Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich, where he is also Co-Director of the AVATAR research Group. In 2015 Nic was the Inaugural Professor for Research in Visionary Cities at the Institute of Fine Arts in Vienna. Nic has written extensively on science fiction and architecture and produced a number of speculative projects that propose architecture ‘as’ science fiction. Nic has designed and curated a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions and his own work has been exhibited internationally.

‘Video Games and Architecture: Cities in virtual worlds’ talk Featuring Nic Clear

  • 24 October 2016
  • Museum of London

Nic Clear amongst others will be speaking at a series of talks around the museum’s video games collection in September-November 2016.

London is a constantly moving wave of urban transformation and social change. The city expands, neighbourhoods change, landmarks pop up, and people blend in and weave the city. The greatest preserved feature of London is its own urban fabric. It’s not about the Big Ben and its landmarks; it’s about capturing the essence of its fluidity, diversity and expansion. A place without boundaries but with people, emotions and memories. London is an ever-changing city; the city’s skyline is constantly moving, societies are shifting, reflecting its adaptability to social change. The city has been redeveloped through history from the Great Fire to the London Blitz and beyond, creating a palimpsest of stories and memories.

Back in 1960, urban studies author Kevin Lynch recognised that, “moving elements in a city and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts”. Three-dimensional game cities are nor static environments or stationary views. They are experienced through movement, action, play and immersion.

Is the concept of space in video games represented through a three-dimensional simulation and the concept of the city experienced through our understanding of the space combined with our own experiences and shared cultural references? Where the city becomes a place of more profound adventure, fantasy and a crossing point of experiences and imagination?

http://ukie.org.uk/event/2016/10/24/video-games-and-architecture-cities-virtual-worlds-talk-museum-london

Nic Clear: 15×15: Fifteen Years of Unit 15

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Paul Nicholls, Golden Age- Simulation, Chronogram, Unit 15 Bartlett School of Architecture (2011)

“After the age of architecture-sculpture we are now in the time of cinematographic factitiousness; literally as well as figuratively, from now on architecture is only a movie.” — Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance

  • April 28, 2014–May 16, 2014 8 a.m.–5 p.m.
  • Location:
    Stepped Review, L. P. Kwee Studios Milstein Hall, Itheca, New York
  • Gallery:
    Showing on AAP Monitors
  • Reception:
    April 28, 2014 6:30 p.m., West Critique Area, L. P. Kwee Studios, Milstein Hall,  Itheca, New York

For 15 years Nic Clear has been using the moving image in the construction of new architectural possibilities through the work of a postgraduate design unit, Unit 15, that uses the moving image to generate, develop, and represent architectural projects.

Students in Unit 15 do not make films of their projects, the film is the project; however, film does not simply mean linear narrative-based work of conventional cinema, the moving image can also be used in installations, performance-based work, and incorporated into computer games and augmented reality. Students are encouraged to use the most appropriate means to effectively describe their ideas.

The exhibition features 100 films and animations produced over the last 15 years as a way of exploring new modes of architectural space, representation, and practice. The films encompass a wide variety of techniques, from stop-frame animation, performance, and motion graphics, to sophisticated computer-generated imagery. The work demonstrates a unique approach to both content and form, and suggests new possibilities for architectural production.

Having previously taught and directed programs at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Clear is currently the head of the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Greenwich, London.

Open Lecture :: Nic Clear :: A Strange Newness; Architecture as Science Fiction

  • Open Lecture Series 2013/2014
  • Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre / M055
  • Mansion Site, Avery Hill Campus
  • Wednesday 16th October; 6PM

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Literary critic Darko Suvin contends that science fiction is a ‘literature of cognitive estrangement’ expressing an ‘exclusive interest in a strange newness, a novum’; any survey of the most advanced architectural production of the last one hundred years reveals the existence of whole series of fictional ‘novum’ even if they are not explicitly labelled as such. As part of this definition Suvin also equates the idea of utopia as a ‘socio-political sub-genre of Science Fiction’. Given that architectural theory has had such a close affinity with Utopian ideas it seems remarkable that the conception of architecture ‘as’ science fiction has not been made more clearly, until now.

Nic Clear is the Head of the Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich School of Architecture, Design and Construction. For over fifteen years Nic has been at the forefront of the use of the moving image in architectural education, developing an innovative design research and teaching practice using digital film and animation in the generation, development and representation of architectural spaces and practices. Nic edited the issue of Architectural Design Architectures of the Near Future based around the work of J.G. Ballard and has written the Architecture section for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook Of Science Fiction.