Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler and Design Research

Elastic Architecture:
Frederick Kiesler and Design Research in the First Age of
Robotic Culture

Techno-cultural Materialism:
Humanity, Technology, and the Environment

A Presentation, Panel Discussion
and Book Launch
Free and open to the public

RVSP please to calpolylametro@gmail.com

In 1960, the renowned architect Philip Johnson championed Frederick Kiesler, calling him “the greatest non-building architect of our time.” Kiesler’s ideas were difficult to construct, but as Johnson believed, “enormous” and “profound.” Kiesler (1890–1965) a member of the European avant-garde, found inspiration in the plastic arts, experimental theater, early animation, and automatons to develop and refine his innovative formal and spatial stage design and installation art practice. Upon moving to New York in the 1920s, he applied these radical Dadaist, constructivist, and surrealist practices to his urban display and cinema building projects. After launching his innovative Design Correlation Laboratory at Columbia and Yale, Kiesler went on to invent new houses, theaters, and galleries that were meant to move, shift, and adapt to evolutionary changes occurring within the natural and built environment. Although many of Kiesler’s designs remained unbuilt, his ideas have proven influential to generations of architects and speculative artists.

Hosted by the Angewandte Innovation Lab
in Collaboration with the Austrian Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Private Foundation and MIT Press

Greg Lynn is an architect born in 1964. He founded his architecture studio Greg Lynn FORM in LA in 1994. He teaches at University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in LA. He is
co-founder of the urban mobility company Piaggio Fast Forward, Inc. in Boston. In 2008, he won the Golden Lion at the International Venice Biennale of Architecture in Venice.

Stephen Phillips is an architect, historian, and theorist. He is Professor of Architecture at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and Founding Director of the Cal Poly Los Angeles Metropolitan Program in Architecture and Urban Design. He is principal architect in the firm Stephen Phillips Architects (SPARCHS) and author of LA [TEN}: Interviews of Los Angeles Architecture 1970s to 1990s (Lars Müller Publishers, 2014) and Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler and Design Research in the First Age of Robotic Culture (MIT Press, 2017)

Peter Bogner is an Austrian art historian, architect, cultural manager, and director of the Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Private Foundation. Prior to being appointed director of the Kiesler foundation, Bogner had worked as the director of the Künstlerhaus in Vienna before resigning in 2013. Peter is the recipient of the 2013 Cross of Honor for Science and Art of the Republic of Austria.

Elastic Architecture will be available for purchase at the event