About Body Architecture 2.0

Throughout history, the human body and technology co-evolved, generating forms of deep symbiosis that materialized in a vast web of artifacts and prostheses that mediate between individuals and the environment. All wearable products, medical devices, tools, and means of transportation, and the city itself can ultimately be interpreted as an extension of our physical bodies. These technological prostheses increase the chances of survival and expand the human experience.

In the future, abrupt changes in the climate and the ecological crisis will rapidly change the environments in which people live. We can expect a widening of extreme conditions, with changes in the atmosphere’s composition, expanding desertification, and flooding of vast territories.It is then possible to imagine that in the decades and centuries to come, our array of prostheses and body extensions will have to be re-designed to adapt to such fast-changing conditions.

Throughout history, the human body and technology co-evolved, generating forms of deep symbiosis that materialized in a vast web of artifacts and prostheses that mediate between individuals and the environment. All wearable products, medical devices, tools, and means of transportation, and the city itself can ultimately be interpreted as an extension of our physical bodies. These technological prostheses increase the chances of survival and expand the human experience. In the future, abrupt...

What you will learn

Investigate the historical and contemporary relationship between the human body and technology to inform design concepts.
Collaborate in small groups to develop innovative projects addressing future needs for wearable artifacts and body extensions.
Explore a range of case studies, from practical gear for extreme environments to speculative designs for future scenarios.
Engage in flexible design timelines, considering both immediate and visionary adaptations for climate change and environmental shifts.
Create a specific wearable artifact or envision radical transformations of the human body in response to emerging challenges.

Methodology

While primed with software and design techniques, participants will form small groups to develop their projects. Research into historical, contemporary, and fictional case studies is highly encouraged, spanning from any gear developed through human history to adapt to aggressive environments to contemporary sportswear and tools for space and deep water exploration to science-fictional examples of body transformation and extension.

The Body Architecture 2.0 studio workshop is flexible to encourage different time scales and degrees of speculation, from shorter-term ones, such as enquiring on which type of wearable artifacts will be needed in the pandemic and post-pandemic world or the future of sports activities, to more radical and visionary ones, from flooded worlds where people will have to live underwater, to outer space exploration.

This workshop anticipates such needs and develops a design agenda that explores and describes emerging opportunities. Moving from identifying a specific trend of climatic change, projects will speculate on transformations of natural and artificial environments and how the human body and its prostheses would react and adapt to such trends.

The projects will eventually propose the design of a specific wearable artifact or a vision of a more radical transformation of the human body.

While primed with software and design techniques, participants will form small groups to develop their projects. Research into historical, contemporary, and fictional case studies is highly encouraged, spanning from any gear developed through human history to adapt to aggressive environments to contemporary sportswear and tools for space and deep water exploration to science-fictional examples of body transformation and extension. The Body Architecture 2.0 studio workshop is flexible to...

Course Content

20 Lessons

Important Notes

SESSION 1
Introductive lecture – 1h
Digital representations of the human body – 1h
Computational design techniques – 2h
Assignment 1
SESSION 2
Kick-off lecture – 0.5h
Computational design techniques – 2.5h
Tutorials / project reviews – 1h
Assignment 2
SESSION 3
Kick-off lecture – 0.5h
Computational design techniques – 2.5h
Tutorials / project reviews – 1h
Assignment 3
SESSION 4
Kick-off lecture – 0.5h
Computational design techniques – 1.5h
Tutorials / project reviews – 2h
Assignment 4
SESSION 5
Kick-off lecture – 0.5h
Computational design techniques – 1.5h
Tutorials / project reviews – 2h
Assignment 5
SESSION 6
Kick-off lecture – 0.5h
Computational design techniques – 1.5h
Tutorials / project reviews – 2h
SESSION 7
Final Crit

Software & tools

Highlights

Instructors

Filippo Nassetti

5 Courses5.0

Filippo Nassetti is an artist and computational designer. The research agenda he advances, Postnatural Design, focuses on exploring the visual languages and project opportunities that emerge from challenging traditional oppositions such as natural and artificial, digital and material, human and non-human. Working between scales and crossing disciplines such as architecture, product, and landscape design relates to research on organic form, computational methods, new media, and advanced manufacturing technologies. Soon after graduating in Architecture, Filippo started operating independently, and throughout the years, the practice engaged with a broad portfolio of projects that included commissions, grants, research activities, and consultancy. In 2012, he co-founded MHOX, an EU-funded research practice and start-up focused on the design of radical artifacts and wearable products through computational techniques and 3d printing. The contribution of MHOX to generative design gained international recognition through many experimental projects, such as Collagen, Carapace and Superabundance Masks, Generative Orthoses, ENEA walking sticks, and the design of prostheses. In 2015, Filippo joined Zaha Hadid Architects, initially as part of the Computation and Design team (ZH CODE), then of Zaha Hadid Design (ZHD), where he was responsible for computational design.

In the eight years he was part of the practice, he led and completed several ZHD projects where computation played a central role. These experiences ranged from the design of both sculptural and functional products to experimental installations, projection mappings, and interior designs. Since 2016, he has taught at UCL at the Bartlett School of Architecture as part of the MArch Urban Design, a postgraduate program focused on computational design, co-leading the Research Cluster 16 through a research-based teaching methodology. Filippo’s independent work has been published and exhibited internationally. He lectured at The Royal College of Arts (London), China Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing), and Florida International University (Miami), among others; exhibited at Centre Pompidou (Paris), Design Museum (London), Bozar Centre (Bruxelles); his work was featured on The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Dezeen, Designboom, Wired Italia.

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