Antón García-Abril, Ensamble Studio, "Architecture of the Earth"

The Gensler Family AAP NYC Center's Spring lecture series, entitled ar·ti·fi·ci·al·i·ty, brings together speakers who help us explore ideas of construction, environment, craft, and of each other. While debates on AI predominantly focus on metaphors related to cognition and “intelligence”—learning, prediction, generation, etc.—less attention is given to the assumptions on what is artificial (and therefore, what is "natural"). These talks explore these assumptions and the ways in which they shape our approach to the built environment.
Curated by Cornall AAP faculty Jesse Le Cavalier (Associate Prof. and Dir. MS. Advanced Urban Design) and Florian Idenburg (Prof. of the Practice, principal Solid Objectives), the Spring lecture series take place in the Gensler Family AAP NYC Center's new permanent home, on the 4th floor of the Tata Innovation Center (Cornell Tech campus, Roosevelt Island).

The series is free and open to the public. Registration required. One registration per attendee.

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Principal, Ensamble Studio

Antón García-Abril is a European Licensed Architect and a registered architect in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He established Ensamble Studio in 2000 and has co-founded WoHo in 2020. He has dedicated his career to innovating typologies, technologies, and methodologies, advancing the fields of architecture and construction through works that are internationally recognized. Together with his partner Debora Mesa, he has progressively redefined the role of the architect, adding to his design competencies those from the developer, the contractor, the fabricator and the inventor. García-Abril is full-professor at the School of Architecture and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2012, where he co-founded the POPlab that same year. He received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996 holds a doctorate degree from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa. Balancing imagination and reality, art and science, their work innovates typologies, technologies and methodologies to address issues as diverse as the construction of the landscape or the prefabrication of the house. From their earliest works, every project makes space for experimentation aiming to advance their field. Their contributions to the theory and practice of architecture have received numerous international recognitions, and through their startup WoHo they are developing ways to increase quality and affordability in architecture by integrating offsite technologies.
INTRODUCTION and Q+A by Florian Idenburg.

Solid Objectives (So-Il)

Florian Idenburg is an internationally renowned Dutch architect with over two decades of professional experience. After learning the ropes in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he founded SO–IL in 2008 together with Jing Liu. His years of working in cross-cultural settings make Florian a thoughtful and collaborative partner. With a joyous demeanor, he pursues innovation through working together. He has a particularly strong background in institutional spaces, leading the office on projects as Kukje Gallery and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis as well as Amant in Brooklyn. His strength lies in generating imaginative ideas and transforming those into real-world spaces and objects.

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Host or Publisher Cornell University, Gensler Family AAP NYC Center