Exhibition

  • Aqueotrope: The Well T(a)mpered Environment
    SCI-Arc Gallery, Los Angeles
    Jan 18, 2013 to Mar 03, 2013
  • GRANTEE
    Marcelyn Gow & Ulrika Karlsson
    GRANT YEAR
    2012

servo la/stockholm, Aqueotrope (installation view), 2013. Photo: Joshua White.

Aqueotrope explores the building envelope as a site for the development of synthetic architectural systems that are informed by and integrate systems of organic matter. The project responds to recent discussions centering on a more conscious application of energetic and material resources in the production of habitable environments by proposing an architecture that has the capacity to embrace entropic tendencies and exploit the latent potential of energetic exchanges—in this case the transfer of moisture through an architectural medium and its effects on more extensive ecologies. Aqueotrope reconsiders the extensive green-roof typology as an immersive roofscape and focuses on amplifying its hydrodynamic potential. The material properties of ceramics with varying degrees of porosity and surface articulation are coupled with a morphology of protuberant forms in order to perform as hydrophilic and hydrophobic constituents of a roofscape designed to subtly tamper with atmospheric effects in its specific environment.

Marcelyn Gow is a partner of servo los angeles. Servo los angeles's work focuses on the development of architectural environments integrating synthetic ecologies with shifting material states and electronic information infrastructures. Servo's work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Centre Pompidou, and SFMoMA, and is in the permanent collections of SFMoMA and the FRAC Centre. Recent publications include the monograph Networks and Environments and projects in Digital Architecture Now, and the New Mathematics of Architecture. Gow received her architecture degrees from the Architectural Association, Columbia University, and the ETH Zurich. Her doctoral dissertation Invisible Environment: Art, Architecture and a Systems Aesthetic explores the relationship between aesthetic research and technological innovation. Gow has lectured internationally and contributed to numerous journals including Perspecta, Via, and AD. She currently teaches graduate design studios and cultural studies seminars at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc) in Los Angeles.

Ulrika Karlsson is a partner of servo stockholm. Servo stockholm's work focuses on the development of architectural environments integrating synthetic ecologies with shifting material states and electronic information infrastructures. Servo's work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Centre Pompidou, and SFMoMA, and is in the permanent collections of SFMoMA and the FRAC Centre. Recent publications include the monograph  Networks and Environments, and projects in Digital Architecture Now and The New Mathematics of Architecture. Karlsson received her architecture degree from Columbia University and her landscape architecture degree from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Karlsson has lectured internationally and contributed to journals including Perspecta, Via, and AD. She is currently a visiting professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where she also the director of the Architecture Program. Together with Marcelyn Gow, Karlsson pursues design research financed by the Swedish Research Council.