As the once distant concerns of extraction and scarcity become more immediate, a direct engagement with the unruly behavior and associative potential of base materials can offer architects a training ground for addressing these same issues at larger scales. Joshua G. Stein will present his research on casting techniques and the recuperation of traditional craft into architectural digital fabrication: “Casting Lessons”  examines how material technique might offer methods for grounding the often disembodied discussions around digital form making, historical style, and urban datasacapes.

Joshua G. Stein is the founder of Radical Craft and the codirector of the Data Clay Network (www.data-clay.org), a forum for the exploration of digital techniques applied to ceramic materials. Radical Craft (www.radical-craft.com) is a Los Angeles-based studio that advances an experimental art and design practice saturated in history, archaeology, and craft. Stein is author of Trajan’s Hollow (ORO Editions, 2019), which examines the role of craft and reproduction in the era of digital scanning and fabrication. He is Professor of Architecture at Woodbury University where he also directs the Institute of Material Ecologies (T-IME). He is the 2019–20 Mitchell Visiting Professor of Architecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image: Installation view of "Trajan’s Hollow," American Academy in Rome, 2011. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Michael J. Waters

For more information on the exhibition, Poured Architecture: Sergio Prego on Miguel Fisac , click here.