Future Cities 6 will be the sixth AVATAR (Advanced Virtual And Technological Architectural Research) conference hosted by the Department of Architecture and Landscape held at the University of Greenwich.. This year the theme of the conference will centre on The Marvelous and asks what creative opportunities architectural design in the twenty-first Century offer and how it is possible to work with such tensions. It also raises questions about how we may deal with the nature of ecology, urban environments and an increasing global society – which are all composed of many different, often contradictory bodies.
Accompanying the conference is an exhibition in the Stockwell Street Project Space featuring works by five of the participants. Keynote speaker Michael Hansmeyer is exhibiting prints of his dazzling 3D ‘Digital Grotesques’ that are currently part of the ‘Printing the World’ exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Hansmeyer is also exhibiting a video specially commissioned for the Pompidou show. ‘You + Pea’ are a young London based architectural design practice of Sandra Youkhana and Luke Casper Pearson who are showing their highly exuberant Tokyo IRTBBC project. Dr Shaun Murray is showing some of the extraordinary drawings that were recently part of an exhibition at the Lightroom Gallery at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada. Professor Neil Spiller will be exhibiting more staggering works from the ‘Communicating Vessels’ project and Nic Clear will be showing a series of new works, ‘Dreamspaces’, studies for his Chthonopolis Project that will shortly be featured at the ‘The Factory’ gallery London.