Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size.

(The Stones of Venice - Volume II. The Sea–Stories: The Nature of Gothic, John Ruskin 1853)

Unit04 is part of the emerging digital design and manufacturing research area within the ASD focusing on architectural adaptation to extreme environmental conditions. This year unit04 will again operate in close collaboration with Unit11 with shared resources, workshops and other events facilitating for crossovers. The two units operate within the same research area of digital design and manufacturing, environmental adaptation and the development of sustainable architectural production but with two distinctively different briefs. Unit 04 will focus on hot or cold climates, new timber industry and a degree of longevity and permanence.

Unit04 will continue 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.

Urban Future Organization, of which Denis Balent, Eva Diu 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.

www.urbanfuture,org
www.se-urbanfuture.org
www.uforg.net