“Prototyping Architecture has key sources from the leading edge of world architecture, situated both in practice and in university research teams.”

Spencer de Grey, Head of Design at Foster + Partners

Prototyping Architecture explores the importance of prototypes in the delivery of high quality contemporary architecture – performative architecture that is inventive, purposeful and beautiful.  The book brings together the work of architects, engineers, manufacturers, product designers, research teams, and artists, sourced from around the world.  Placing a particular emphasis on research and experimentation, this book shows how prototyping can inform architecture with maquettes, models and full-scale trial assemblies. The importance of prototyping within architecture to achieve high quality construction is also examined. Essays by international leaders in contemporary architectural prototyping and design are included. The book documents the exhibition Prototyping Architecture, which was inaugurated at Wolfson Hall, University of Nottingham, 2012, and then shown at the London Building Centre Gallery, 2013, where it was accompanied by the international conference Prototyping Architecture.  The final stage of the exhibition is at Design at Riverside Gallery and University of Waterloo, 2013 for the ACADIA 2013 Adaptive Architecture international conference, Cambridge, Ontario.

 

This book records the proceedings of The Prototyping Architecture International Conference 2013 organised by Michael Stacey and the Architecture & Tectonics Research Group of The University of Nottingham, with an International Peer-Review Committee. The conference was hosted in London by The Building Centre Trust, 21-13 March 2013, to coincide with the Prototyping Architecture Exhibition curated by Michael Stacey. Prototyping Architecture explores the importance of prototypes in the delivery of high quality contemporary architecture – performative architecture that is inventive, purposeful and beautiful.  The 500+ pages of this book include peer-reviewed papers on Prototyping Architecture by world leading researchers and architects, many of whom had artefacts in the exhibition. The essays span from new outdoor acoustic sound stages to the reinvention of hand made bricks. The book is structure by four themes: Resourceful & Inventive, Matter & Tectonics, Tectonics & Technology Transfer and Performative. The cornerstones of the book are the four keynote papers, by world leading architects Frank Barkow, Philip Beesley, James Timberlake and automotive body engineer Mark White. Prototyping Architecture: The Conference Papers is in essence a companion publication to Prototyping Architecture by Michael Stacey, 2013.