Lydia Kallipoliti
Assistant Professor
The 2012-2013 Feltman Chair in Lighting is held by Lydia Kallipoliti.
Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer and theorist, currently Assistant Professor Adjunct at the Cooper Union and at Columbia University in New York. She holds a Diploma in Architecture and Engineering from A.U.Th in Greece, a SMArchS in design and building technology from M.I.T, an MA) from Princeton University and is completing her PhD at Princeton University. Her research focuses on recycling material experiments and the intersection of cybernetic and ecological theories in the twentieth century.
She is the recipient of numerous awards including a silver medal in the W3 international awards for digital innovation in environmental awareness, an honor at the 14th Webby Awards from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Marvin E. Goody award for the creative use of materials, a Fulbright scholarship, the Lawrence Anderson Award for the creative documentation of architectural history, the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and the High Meadows Sustainability Fund.
Her design work has received awards in several international architectural competitions, and has been exhibited worldwide at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Biennial Miami+ Beach, the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum of Barcelona (D-Hub), the Biennale of Young Greek architects, the Madrid ARCO, the 5th National Exhibition of Greek Architectural Work and the 'Non-Standard Praxis' digital design conference. Her theoretical work has been published internationally in magazines and books including Log, Architectural Design, Praxis: journal of building and writing, Domus, ArchPlus, Future Anterior, The Cornell Journal of Architecture, Thresholds, 306090, Pidgin, TJE, Architecture in Greece, Routledge’s Urbanism Reader and presented in lectures at Yale University, Harvard University, Brown University, the University of British Columbia, Arizona State University, Auburn University, the University of Waterloo various ACSA meetings, annual meetings of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), the CUNY center in NY, the New School for Social Research in NYC and Princeton University.
Kallipoliti is the curator and designer of the exhibition “EcoRedux: Design Remedies for a Dying Planet”, which has been traveled globally including the Byzantine Museum of Art in Athens Greece, Columbia University, the Cooper Union and the Disseny Hub of Barcelona in Spain. Parallel to the exhibition, Kallipoliti developed and founded EcoRedux as a non-profit organization -- an innovative online open–source educational resource documenting the history of ecological experimentation in the postwar period and its potential creative reuse in contemporary design culture. EcoRedux is also a special issue of Architectural Design magazine (AD) published by Wiley & Sons in January 2011, edited by Kallipoliti.
Kallipoliti worked as a project architect for dECOi architects/MIT Digital Design Group between 2002 and 2005, and as a principal project architect for the Athens Olympics 2004 between 2000 and 2002. She is a registered architect in Europe and a member of the Technical Chamber of professional architects in Greece, where she has built a number of residences and outdoor spaces, parks and environments.
Projects & Links
ECOREDUX (BOOK)
ECOREDUX [Book]
Credits: edited by Lydia Kallipoliti
EcoRedux is a special issue of Architectural Design (AD) magazine (2010) including the contributions of Anthony Vidler, Fabiola Lopez-Durand & Nikki Moore, Mark Wigley, Lydia Kallipoliti, Matthias Hollwich & Marc Kushner (HWKN), Francois Roche (R & Sie(n) architects), Eva Franch i Gilabert, Alexandros Tsamis, Anna Pla Catala, Eric Vergne, Rafi Segal, Jonathan Enns, Mitchell Joachim (Terreform ONE) and Brian Carter.
EcoRedux allegorically brings back to life a 1972 issue of AD, which outlined an emerging environmental consensus in the postwar period: a form of ‘synthetic naturalism', where the laws of nature and metabolism were displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings. What happens now though, in the environmental battlefield of a world that has suffered severe loss of resources? At present, the new wave of ecological architecture cannot be solely directed to the ethics of the world's salvation and the rhetoric of confinement. It rather upraises as a psycho-spatial or mental position, fuelling a reality of change, motion and action. Though mindful of the past, the objective of this issue is distant from idealizing and romanticizing the environmental agenda of the 1970s. EcoRedux critically recognizes a recirculatory understanding of the world and its resources and hints towards a new opportunistic ‘materiality' that becomes a requisite part of our discipline.
Links:
http://www.storefrontnews.org/exhibitions_events/events?c=5&p=0&e=427
http://www.archisearch.gr/article/466/ecoredux-manifesto-by-lydia-kallipoliti.htm
ECOREDUX (EXHIBITION AND ONLINE RESOURCE
ECOREDUX [Exhibition & Online Resource]
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti
With the collaboration of Amie Shao, Lydia Xynogala and Anna Pla Catala
EcoRedux assembles an unexplored genealogy of ecological material experiments that underground architectural groups conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. The research project documents a larger disciplinary transformation and an experimental mindset in the finale of the 1960s, reporting the displacement of 'building' as the main product of architectural design. All imaginable provisional structures and small-scale strategies became part of a new equation that reflected the intense sociopolitical concerns of the time and the collective fantasizing about how new technologies can become remedial tools to save the planet.
Parallel to the presentation of a historical archive that maps visually and verbally the trajectory of small-scale ecological strategies, EcoRedux explores the remarkable contemporary resurgence of ecological strategies in architectural imagination: it features new interpretations and ecological strategies of the historical material in the form of diagrams, drawings, animations, interviews with the architects, computer codes, cookbooks and instruction manuals.
Overall, EcoRedux seeks tentative connections with an “elastic” understanding of “ecology,” in a time where the term addressed not only “new naturalism” and techno-scientific standards, but also systems theory: a recirculatory understanding of the world and its resources.
Links:
www.ecoredux.com
http://www.dhub-bcn.cat/en/exhibition/ecoredux-02-design-manuals-dying-planet
http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/ecoredux-02-design-manuals-for-a-dying-planet/
http://www.cyanmag.com/diseno-foto/ecoredux-02-manuales-de-diseno-para-un-planeta-moribundo/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiOTSOTPhos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0vSxTOxPIo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgq1VKUAYfQ&feature=related
FELT VACUUM WALL
FELT VACUUM WALL
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti & Alexandros Tsamis
Felt Vacuum Wall is a cleaning device embedded in the structure of an exterior envelope component. The scope of this research is to reevaluate the function of large exterior surfaces in polluted cities and augment their environmental performance by collecting dust. Floating dust particles are collected onto the wall purifying the air. The surface then, by polluting itself, attains a positive, productive role for the global atmosphere.
The mechanism of collecting dust from the air is activated by electricity, which similarly to the role that a magnet plays in the collection of iron fillings, channels or vacuums floating dust particles onto the felt surface. Felt becomes an attractor for floating airy dust particles and integrates them onto its body. This is a significantly time-consuming process, but it can be artificially accelerated by electricity. If subjected to a certain amount of stress, piezoelectric materials integrated in the exterior wall structure, generate electricity; air currents in tall buildings provide sufficient for the process to begin. Felt Vacuum Wall purifies the polluted air of your city. Retrofitted to the exterior envelope of buildings, it functions as a cleansing device that attracts floating dust particles, incorporates them into its body, and outputs reusable felt. By substituting your traditional curtain wall with a performative system that purifies the atmosphere, you too can make a difference in our global cause.
THE ENVIROBUBBLE
THE ENVIROBUBBLE
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti, Michael Young, Marianthi Liapi, Kostis Oungrinis and Anna Pla Catalá
Student Project Team from the Technical University of Crete, Greece: Georgios Andresakis, Yiannis Apostolopoulos, Tzeny Gorantonaki , Eirini Kalogeropoulou, Michalis Kantarzis, Despina Linaraki, Ioannis Liofagos, Dimitris Mairopoulos, Evangelos Alexandros Maistralis, Anna Neratzouli , Iasonas Paterakis, Eleni Roupa, Aggeliki Terezaki, Alma Tralo, Vassilis Tsesmetzis, Dimitris Vaimakis, Anna-Maria Moschouti-Vermer, Georgia Voradaki.
The “Envirobubble” installation is the result of a summer workshop held at the Technical University of Crete, Greece in August 2010. The installation was exhibited at the Design Museum of Barcelona in Spain (Disseny Hub) in the spring of 2011.
In 1972, the underground architecture group Antfarm created a pneumatic envelope at the University of California at Berkeley envisioned as a “Clean Air Pod,” where people could breathe safely sealed off from the air pollution outside. The Clean Air Pod (CAP) would screen out deadly pollutants and protect the people enveloped in the bubble.
Revisiting this project, this installation raises issues on air quality still eminent today, though questioning at the same time if the air we breathe indoors is more hazardous than the air we breathe outdoors. “The envirobubble” seeks to expand awareness from outdoor to indoor air quality and alert visitors as to the breathable air in heavily sealed air conditioned buildings, with high degrees of condensation.
“The envirobubble” presents four types of air pods as purifying machines. Each cluster of air pods performs and visualizes a purification process focusing on different types of pollutants: A) Dust (particulate inorganic matter) B) Moisture (humidity levels) D) Gas (toxic off-gas emissions E) CO2 (plant respiration). By opening up a perspective on the development of indoor air quality as an architectural design problem, rather than an engineering problem, the aim is to initiate a vital reassessment of environmental control in design terminology.
CRYSTAL SHELTER
CRYSTAL SHELTER
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti & Alexandros Tsamis
Crystal Shelter is an urban environment made out of various pieces of recycled glass, photovoltaic cells and electrochromic glass parts. The reused glass pieces are positioned on a new armature among solar-powered cells and electrically charged electrochromic materials according to the specific formal and material properties – transparency and reflection – of each piece. The new composite enclosure becomes a mosaic that negotiates the relationship between exterior and interior space in the city. The transparency of the exterior envelope topically changes according to the input of solar energy and the location of the user. The recycled glass pieces, the photovoltaic cells – which convert solar power to electrical current – and the electrochromic materials – which change from clear to translucent according electrical charge – synthesize a thick composite exterior envelope which locally changes thus revealing to the user different fragmented views of urban space. Crystal Shelter necessitates an enhanced degree of tactile and optical engagement from the user, who is urged to discover new ways of spatial occupation and senses of viewing through multiple mosaic layers of glass. The variable, non-homogenous material allocation in the envelope emerges from precise rules and constraints that relate to a number of parameters including solar power input, possibilities for programmatic occupation, structure and vision.
DROSS
DROSS
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti
The word dross refers to matter that is foreign, worn out and impure, such as the scum formed by oxidation at the surface of molten metals. Based on a perception of material impurity, this research encompasses the generative potential of obsolete objects and spaces, or in other words waste material that is displaced culturally or functionally from its previous identity. The content of this research engages 'obsolete matter' in different scales, or 'techno-excrements' as an emerging city-born condition, derivative of the urban system's internal erosion.
A matrix of objects was created with obsolete objects of different scale, textural and formal complexity. The matrix played the role of a generating device for new material, new images and new concepts. Each obsolete object delivered several by-products that could be directly used in new assemblages.
Since it is impossible to dispose of these objects due to their extremely high-embodied material energy, the premise of this research is the development of post-praxis or 'architectural' reuse design strategies. The intention is to revisit our design and material culture, not by attempting to create new memory, but by recycling meanings of objects and spaces with embedded memory. In parallel, the intent is to go beyond existing techniques, such as reuse through signification and collage of unrelated building parts and to explore the possibilities of cast materials and generative processes of 'moulding' related to computation.
FECUND CITYSCAPES
FECUND CITYSCAPES
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti, Alexandros Tsamis, Yannis Zavoleas, John Fernandez
In Athens, the subway's excavation process has revealed the presence of “other” cities, below the contemporary level. Based on the historic palimpsest, this project aims to create an active receptive evolution of the palimpsest; a registration device of activities that emerge in the urban context. 'Fecund Cityscapes' are vertical inhabitable wall borders that integrate ‘seeds' of urban activity their structure. A 'seed' is defined as a Pneumatic ring, placed in the floor components of the structure, which can be activated (inflated) by the visitor. The visitor's activity causes the structure to “impregnate” and transform in two ways; change of mass due to the inflation and change of texture (color) due to temperature shifts in the interior. The changes are registered on the epidermis of the structure, which conveys to the urban environment the levels of interior ephemeral occupation by visitors. The structures are placed at the borderlines of urban voids, related to the subway's stations. An emergent urban network is generated, which in correlation to the existing one, offers an alternative navigation system for the city.
TRAVELER’S HOME
TRAVELER’S HOME
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti & Alexandros Tsamis
The excavation of the subway in Athens brought to light a set of urban voids with dual qualities: spaces which serve as exits of tube stations, but are simultaneously gaps in the city fabric, residual parts of city blocks. Although these locations are dispersed in the city, they are connected through the subway and can function as a unified system. This project is a network of spaces where mobile units that travel though the subway are exchanged between locations. The proposal consists of a number of spaces that reflect temporality and change in the occupation of public space. Because of the finite number of mobile units throughout the city, as one site becomes less occupied, another becomes more occupied altering the internal structure of the system as in a system connecting vessels.
580 PARK AVENUE
580 PARK AVENUE
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti & Aurel von Richthofen
580 Park Avenue is an architectural and construction project for the complete remodeling of a private residence of a prewar landmark in Manhattan, New York City.
Because of a number of limitations and building regulations in NYC landmark buildings, the wet spaces of the apartments could neither be expanded in size, nor altered in layout. This building regulation, called “wet over dry” directed the design of all wet spaces. The bathrooms were conceived as “space cabins”, like the wet spaces of airplanes, trains and ships. The layout of the cabin bathroom suggests a multi-functional wet space in a clearly defined minimum space, where different functions, plumbing systems and storage spaces can be integrated in a unified construction. Therefore the bathroom furniture was designed digitally as integrated, variable surfaces consisted of different parts and pieces.
Also, only wood and stone were used in the renovation, processed, carved and cut in specific dimensions with CNC milling machines through the use of digital fabrication techniques. The aim was to bridge conventional construction methods with digital tools, while also to use common materials, which may attain a new form and function.
WINDOWWALL
WINDOWWALL
Credits: Lydia Kallipoliti, Alexandros Tsamis, Anas Alfaris
Composite materials combine two or more materials properties within a single body, yielding a performance that is different that the summation of the properties of each constituent. Given this intrinsic property of composite materials, the intention of this research is to develop composite building elements that combine windows and walls by bringing together different performative attributes in local areas of one body.
The proposed exterior envelope component is a combination of thermoplastic polymers and investigates modes of redefining the notions of a window and a wall.
The project aims to investigate mouding techniques, or techniques of “non-assembly” for fabricating exterior building skins. Methodologically, we developed physical techniques (through casting) after virtually testing material properties in the CES computer program, which is a material science software. The new components achieve gradient areas of transparency and opacity in a single component, the WindoWall. The concept was to substitute the joint, as a third piece of assembling two pieces, with an area of gradient transition in a singular surface. The main benefit by incorporating different properties within the same gradient surface-element is the elimination of multiple joints and therefore the reduction of excessive use of building materials.
ECOREDUX
Curated and Designed by Lydia Kallipoliti with the assistance of Amie Shao and Lydia Xynogala
www.ecoredux.com
Description: EcoRedux assembles an unexplored genealogy of ecological material experiments that underground architectural groups conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. The research project documents a larger disciplinary transformation and an experimental mindset in the finale of the 1960s, reporting the displacement of 'building' as the main product of architectural design. All imaginable provisional structures and small-scale strategies – pneumatics from used parachutes, hand-made domes from discarded materials, electronic-lawn carpets, pills, capsules and self-sufficient systems, garbage houses, foam shelters-- became part of a new equation that reflected the intense sociopolitical concerns of the time and the collective fantasizing about how new technologies can become remedial tools to save the planet.
Parallel to the presentation of a historical archive that maps visually and verbally the trajectory of small-scale ecological strategies, EcoRedux explores the remarkable contemporary resurgence of ecological strategies in architectural imagination: it features new interpretations and ecological strategies of the historical material in the form of diagrams, drawings, animations, interviews with the architects, computer codes, cookbooks and instruction manuals.
Overall, EcoRedux seeks tentative connections with an “elastic” understanding of “ecology,” in a time where the term addressed not only “new naturalism” and techno-scientific standards, but also systems theory: a recirculatory understanding of the world and its resources.
In the exhibition, the ARCHIVE enlists numerically 100 ecological material experiments from 1959 to 1975 in chronological order. GENEALOGIES synthesize the experiments enlisted in the archive, in groups organized by material technique. Techniques range from “soft” based on the transformation of substances and biological change, to “hard,” based on the assembly of components that are reused and transferred to different contexts. The scope of the GENEALOGIES section is to visually reconstruct the ARCHIVE's database. The AUDIO wall is an oral section accompanying the ARCHIVE, where visitors can listen to interviews with the architects of the documented experiments.
