Trailer

Vernissage

THE EXHIBITION
13 April – 29 May 2015

Thursday and Friday, 4 – 7.30 pm
with a guided tour by the editors of floornature.com

Free registration below:

Eventbrite - Futurecraft - Tomorrow by Design #1

For visits by appointment: Paolo Schianchi paolo@floornature.com (for groups of 5 people and more)

During the Fiera Internazionale del Mobile – Milan’s furniture fair – and the imminent opening of the Universal Exposition, SPAZIOFMGPERL’ARCHITETTURA is expanding its research horizons and inaugurating FUTURECRAFT, the first appointment in the Tomorrow by Design series.

FUTURECRAFT, the exhibition underway from 13 April to 29 May 2015, aims to investigate new areas of action in the design sector, going beyond the simple perception of buildings to make way for the fusion of different methods and technologies.

Featuring in the exhibition are the professional worlds connected to Carlo Ratti, architect, engineer and researcher, as well as curator and designer of the Future Food District in Expo 2015. MIT Senseable City Laboratory, Carlo Ratti Associati, Superpedestrian and Makr Shakr represent the multidisciplinary approach laying the foundation for the Tomorrow by Design series.

FUTURECRAFT greets visitors with a range of scenarios that integrate architecture, design and environment with the use of cutting-edge digital technology. A pathway allowing experimentation with an imagined world that keeps the individual at the centre of an ecosystem redesigned to optimise the quality of living.

Luca Molinari, scientific head of SPAZIOFMG and curator of FUTURECRAFT, offers an overview of the series and introduces the first appointment: “With FUTURECRAFT, the first episode in the Tomorrow by Design trilogy, SPAZIOFMG is opening its doors to ideas and projects that go far beyond the traditional area and idea of buildings. The gallery makes itself part of the Universal Exposition system, turning into a research laboratory where the brightest ideas converge to design the future of the Planet. At the same time, it opens up to the city and turns into a welcoming, relaxing location, just like a home. Carlo Ratti, who designed one of the core forward-looking theme areas – the Future Food District – for the Expo is the first of the designers asked to interpret this delicate theme.
SPAZIOFMG describes the complexity of an architect and engineer who invites input from all fields of knowledge into his professional practice and turns them into projects. He does this through the futuristic but real, functioning objects he invents: like the wheel that explains to the cyclist how to get the most out of his pedalling, through to the plotter that can write (and erase) vertically, in addition to the infinitely reconfigurable side table-cum-chair designed for Cassina.”

PROJECTS

MIT Senseable City Lab – Waterfly

Waterfly is a cutting-edge application of drone technology that reconsiders how we can monitor, research and protect water quality across the globe. A set of specially designed quadcopters is programmed to work together as a swarm, sharing a series of tasks to efficiently map water quality and scan for emerging pollutants and threats. Onboard sensors enable the drones to gather data at both macro and micro scales; hyperspectral imaging generates maps of photosynthetic activity in order to detect algae blooms, whilst submersible probes gather spot-readings, including chlorophyll and phytocyanin. Waterfly is a link between the natural and artificial worlds, an innovative system for detecting, predicting, and ultimately mitigating some of the great environmental challenges we face today.

Carlo Ratti Associati – Digital Water Pavilion

The Digital Water Pavilion is an interactive structure made of digitally-controlled water curtains, built at the entrance of the 2008 Expo in Zaragoza. Office space for tourism during the event in 2008, the pavilion now houses a cafe and an infobox on the Milla Digital project. The challenge was to use the water – the theme of Expo 2008 – as an architectural element. The walls are composed of digitally controlled water droplets, which can generate writing, patterns or access spaces.
The result is a space that is interactive and reconfigurable in that each wall can potentially become an entrance or exit, while the internal partitions can shift depending on the number of people present. The only material elements are the two boxes and the roof, which can move vertically and flatten to the ground removing the presence of the entire pavilion.

Startups – Makr Shakr

Makr Shakr is a new robotic bartending system that allows users to create, in real-time, personalized cocktail recipes through an application and transform them into crowd-sourced drink combinations. The cocktail creation is assembled by robotic arms, whose movements mimic the actions of a bartender, from the shaking of a martini to the thin slicing of a lemon garnish. The system explores the new dynamics of social creation and consumption – ‘design, make and enjoy’ – and in just the time needed to prepare a new cocktail.