Adaptation Lab

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• 2013

Jeffrey Inaba, Founder, INABA; and Director, Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting (C-Lab), Columbia University, brings his research into technologies and physical space to the AF Project Space in the form of a week-long live laboratory of public events. Exploring the untapped opportunities for applying digital technologies to architecture and the fabric of the city, the project will further expand upon the themes of Inaba’s recent publication Adaptation: Architecture, Technology and the City (2013).

“Technologies are increasingly important to the functioning of cities, and as a result, many fields have become involved in shaping the urban environment. But this transformation won’t occur as we might think. As the city becomes more technological, architectural design will become more essential.” – Jeffrey Inaba

Already, government agencies and companies have incorporated communications technologies into the built environment, using sensors and imaging to monitor cities’ operations and manage resources more efficiently. These technologies gather data that can improve infrastructure, energy consumption, public safety, and transit. This approach has yielded compelling benefits and is therefore likely to become a viable model for the future of the city. But can technology and architecture do more together? Could the technological field adapt to the physical space of the city by looking more closely at the technologies of architecture?

Alongside the public events programme, C-Lab will produce a display of new and previously unpublished work developed especially for the project including analytical drawings, photography and videos that extend the themes presented in Adaptation: Architecture, Technology, and the City, as well as material from the current issue of Volume edited by C-Lab that considers the history and future of mechanical systems in buildings as a special case of the sophisticated negotiations between architecture and other technologies.

Jeffrey Inaba is the founder of INABA, a New York-based architecture firm that specialises in an analytical approach to form making which aims to break down the constraints of a project and conceptualise creative alternative solutions. He is the founding director of C-Lab, a think tank at Columbia University‘s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation whose studies of urban and architecture issues of public consequence have been published and exhibited widely. He is the features editor of Volume magazine, and the author and editor of numerous other publications. Before starting INABA in 2006, he was a principal of AMO, the design and cultural consultancy founded by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. He studied at Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley.