Type: Research | Year: Ongoing
2023 PROFESSIONAL PRIX DE ROME IN ARCHITECTURE PRIZE
PAST/FORWARD: ROBOTIC FABRICATION AT THE SCALE OF ARCHITECTURE
We are honored to share that Canada Council for the Art has selected MODA as the recipient of the 2023 Prix de Rome in Architecture Prize.
This Prize is awarded to a young practitioner of architecture or an architectural firm that has completed their first built works and has demonstrated exceptional artistic potential. With this prize, the recipient may travel abroad to develop their skills and their creative practice, and to strengthen their position in the international architecture world.
Inspired by the Prix de Rome in architecture, which was created in the 18th century and helped young architects train in Italy, the Prix de Rome in Architecture – Professional was established in Canada in 1987 in pursuit of a more outward-looking vision towards the world.
While, as a profession, we are actively exploring how contemporary concerns related to affordability, equity, diversity, inclusiveness and environmental sustainability hold the potential to reshape the ‘methods’ in which we approach design, we feel that the ‘means’ in which we construct our physical environment are often taken as a given and outside the agency of architecture. As such, we feel that this ‘blind spot’ demands further inquiry, not only with respect to the disruptive potential of robotics at the scale of architecture, but also the generational opportunity for architects to perhaps re-enter the world of ‘making’; a PAST/forward if you will to a time when architects “leveraged the benedictions of science and technology towards the betterment of society.” (quote by Reinier de Graaf - OMA)
The purpose of our research is to further educate our practice through research into state-of-the-art robotic fabrication processes at the scale of architecture and urbanism. Our intent is to establish a critical relationship between robotic technologies, construction, and emerging architectural methodologies in Canada and beyond.
Our research consists of six interrelated objectives, namely: in-situ fabrication, digital materiality, mass customization, the incorporation of A.I. or machine learning, robotic entrepreneurship, and public knowledge distribution to fuel research into accessible application.
We will accomplish this by drawing from an international cross-section of leading architects, manufacturers, fabricators, academics, and researchers from the United States (Boston), Switzerland (Zurich + Dubendorf), the Netherlands (Amsterdam + Rotterdam), Spain (Barcelona) and Japan (Tokyo + Osaka).