CAC 2008 (computation, complexity and emergence)

The department of architecture of the Oporto University will hold, in September 2008, the “Contemporary Architectural Challenges: Conception, Production and Performance”, an international meeting of scientific and cultural foundation that intends to encase the challenges faced nowadays by the project and construction of architectural work in the face of the present techno-cultural context. The afore mentioned event will be organized by Professor Doutor Rui Povoas and Professor Doutor Gonçalo Furtado and will enclose several platforms involving teachers, researchers as well as national and international critics.

This initiative arises in the sequence of previous similar projects such as the international colloquium “Architecture and the Information Society” (FAUP 2002) and the corresponding release of the publishing of “Architecture: Machine and Body” (Faup Publications, 2006). The afore mentioned colloquium arose a debate about the impact of the Information Society on the discipline concerning Project, Architectural Construction and the City; and benefited from the contribution of national and international protagonists such as Alessandro Aurigi, João Camacho, Ted Krueger, Eurico Carrapatoso, António Costa, Xavier Costa, José Pinto Duarte, Manuel Duarte, Borges Gouveia, Luís Guardão, Marco Guilloniac, Fernando Lisboa, José Mamede, Francesc Munoz, Paulo Silva, Alfredo Soeiro e José Pedro Sousa. The afore mentioned publication includes the endowments of Ted Kruger, Ignási Sola Morales, Neil Spiller, Neil Leach, Josep Maria Montaner, José Bragança de Miranda e Adrian Forty and was envisaged “in order to offer a sustained contribution regarding the technological dimension of our multidiscursive reality”.
We have been observing, nowadays, a strong input of the new information technologies as far as conception and production of architecture are concerned as well as what regards to the new conceptual challenges including the issue of complexity, source and sustainability, making it paramount to promote the continuity of an up to date scientific debate on such matters. With the goal of giving progression and renovating the debate aroused by the afore said initiatives and thus contributing to a careful thought of the Project and Production of the Contemporary Architecture we now depict the CAC 2008.
The event will count with the attendance of spokesmen such as Sola-Morales, Jasia Reichardt, Ted Krueger, Josep Maria Montaner, Neil Leach, among others. The three conference tables will count with the attendance of various public names such as Rui Povoas, Gonçalo Furtado, João Pedro Xavier, Joaquim Vieira, Vitor Silva, Marco Guinoulhiac, José Pedro Sousa, Borges Gouveia, Luís Pinto Faria, Bragança de Miranda, Alfredo Soeiro, João Rocha, Pedro Martins, José Pinto Duarte, Jorge Lino Alves, Dirk Loyens, Nancy Diniz, Pedro Leão, João Pedro Xavier, Vitor Silva, Vasco Branco, Nuno Pinheiro, João Moura, Miguel Serra, and others.
The colloquium will be accompanied by the publishing of the relating speeches. Parallel to this, a workshop for students will also take place, the tuition of it under the supervision of the nationally and internationally known (ReD Research + Design Studio), with the aim of revealing recent potentialities regarding the field of the architectonic projects and production. It is likely that an exhibition will also take place. The event was associated to a previous homage to the work of the recently deceased professor Fernando Lisboa in the domain of the architectonical project upheld by computer and semiotics.