George Katodrytis lectured at Studio-X Amman Lab (Columbia University)
Emergent Material and Performative Urbanism: A Search for a New and Dynamic Architecture of the Middle East
Urbanism in the region has a remarkable precedent. New technologies of communication and transmission of imagery have brought about dramatic morphological changes. Westernization was interpreted as the only form of modernization. Yet emergent practices of dynamic processes and topological modeling are now capable to incorporate a new language in architecture that can reconnect urbanism to modern life, environmental specificity and culture. Instead of celebrating the uniqueness of the architectural object, performative urbanism focuses on how the object (material tectonics), the process of production (programmatic iterations) and local behavior (contextual anomalies) can become culturally relevant. The generation of form follows a process in which geometry, coded with material behavior, becomes responsive to fields of influence, physical forces and environmental dynamics.
