Plenary Session Becoming Embodied

Becoming Embodied opens with a plenary session that explores transitions in material technologies understood as carriers of embedded values and forms of agency. Bringing together architectural practice, research, and theory, the session frames embodiment as a transdisciplinary and prospective field of inquiry. The role of the Critical Antagonists in the plenary session is to articulate a critical understanding of Becoming Embodied —a vision than takes into account the fifteen sessions with over forty speakers, while focusing in particular on the two original Research by Design investigations and the two emerging workshops.

Within this framework, Bruther will briefly present their research on activating artificial light as a material and political agent in spatial practice. Secondly, BC architects will present their investigation into combining algae-based components with reused demolition materials from public space to develop a low-carbon construction system. Emerging architects TEN and Nuno Melo Sousa will share the outcomes of their workshops: the former exploring material and temporal stratification through the notion of ‘capable structures,’ while the latter investigating structural and scalar interpretations of a simple infrastructure —a table— as a mediator of appropriation and engagement.
Together, this multiplicity of voices intends to provide diverse approaches into material and technical innovation, temporal transition, low-carbon fabrication, and meaning, establishing a conceptual ground for the sessions that follow.