Unit04 will be examining and forming current and future tendencies in spatial production dictated by developments in the timber industry and the associated material science, parametric modelling, digital manufacturing, and off-site production. Unit04 is continuing its ongoing research in the built environments ability to adapt to our rapidly changing natural environment. The act of building is one of our planet’s largest polluting agents. Innovation in material science, fabrication techniques and production methods is offering the only novel way of producing space capable of reducing waste, the carbon footprint and our dependency on fossil fuels. These innovations must be exploited in order for us to adapt to the impending natural consequences of over population, dwindling resources and pollution. The project output of Unit04 is forming the basis for an emergent environmentally conscious ecology of construction, tightly integrating architectural quality as one of its fundamental principles. Our aim is the production of architecture, form and architectural space, reciprocally linked to the set of parameters and relationships that informs them.

· We will question the building industry’s short sighted view of the balance between quality and economy frequently disregarding longevity and environmental impact.
· We strive for a speculative, innovative and sustainable architecture exploiting key concepts such as parametric design, digital fabrication, localized production facilitating for increased mass customization.
· We strive for a seamless integration between ranges of scales controlled by parametric modelling techniques that in turn inform a Building Information Model (BIM) used to manage all the design information.
· We aim for a more contextual and integrated mode of design, in which the rationality sought for in the industry, is forged by the analytical and procedural experimentation afforded by largely speculative projects.
· We aim at highly data, site and context specific architecture with an inherit capacity for redeployment and re-adaptation.

The research of Unit04 will spring from material research and the development of material systems conditioned by digital manufacture. These systems will be tested, developed and deployed in a range of different scales and contexts in collaboration with some of urban future organization’s current consultants and clients. The brief for both 4th years and 5th year relate to the development of an ecological tourism industry adapting the European quality mark "Nature’s Best" in areas suffering from economical and/or environmental duress. We are going to operate in Sweden, one of the largest timber producers in Europe. We will travel to Stockholm and to Borgafjäll, a resort designed in 1950 by Ralph Erskine in the Southern part of Lapland (http://www.borgafjallen.se/panorama/Heliski/index.html)

Unit04 engages with design based research; however we see the material output of the work as the gauge of its success. Unit04 actively teaches design and computational techniques and a range of methodologies for design with the objective nurture and develop design talent.

Urban Future Organization, of which Denis Balent, Eduardo De Oliveira Barata and Jonas Lundberg are all part of, is an international architectural practice and design research collaborative. UFO has won a number of international competitions exhibited its work at the Venice and Beijing Biennales and was recently featured in 10X10 v. 2.