Herwig Baumgartner is a licensed architect, principal and co-founder of the architecture firm
B+U, based in Los Angeles and a professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).
Previously he taught at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and conducted workshops around
the country and abroad.
He received his diploma in Music and New Media from the University of Music and Performing
Arts in Vienna and graduated with a Master’s degree in Architecture from Studio
Wolf D. Prix, University of Applied Arts
in Vienna in 1996.
Prior to founding B+U with Scott Uriu in 2000, Herwig Baumgartner worked as a senior associate
and project architect at Gehry Partners. He also collaborated with artist Richard Serra and worked on several large-scale
sculpt-ural projects in New Zealand, Naples, Toronto, and San Francisco.
B+U work is often informed by experimenting
with concepts and techniques outside the archi-tectural profession, including electronic music, science and computation.
“Technology is the answer ... but what was the question?” (Cedric Price, 1966)
The Greek term téchne, is
a term which up until today in European philosophy, coined the notion of Art, Science and Craft. The history of technology
could be described as the history of inventions in form of tools and techniques. At the same time, it is closely connected
to the history of science, economics and social agendas - a history of the very human condition itself. Weather viewed through
the topic of energy, information, productivity, machines, or social development, today most of the world is accommodating
a “technically civilized life” to some extent.
“It is the moral, economic, and political choices we make, not the machines
we use”, Lewis Mumford argues, “that have produced a capitalist industrialized machine-oriented economy, whose imperfect fruits
serve the majority so imperfectly.”
This years’s IoA Sliver Lecture series "Architecture and Technology“ is trying
to gather professionals to present versatile notions of technology and its impact on the discipline of Art and Architecture.
The invited lecturers will present their take on technology and reflect on the potentials which it bears or what conventions
it questions and how to approach those creatively/artistically.
Upcoming IoA Sliver Lectures:
May 11:
Martin Tamke, CITA
May 23: Liam Young, SCI-Arc
June 6: Ruth Schnell, Martin Kusch, Angewandte
www.facebook.com/sliverlectureswww.i-o.a.at/sliver
