Kenniscentrum faculteit Digitale Media & Creatieve Industrie

Register now for the Media Architecture Biennale

15 jun 2021 13:13

The Lectorate of Civic Interaction Design and the lectorate of Spatial Urban Transformation organise The Media Architecture Biennale together with Utrecht University and Media Architecture Institute. The online event will take place from 24th of June till July 2nd. It is the world’s premier event on media architecture, urban interaction design, and urban informatics.

The Media Architecture Biennale brings together architects, artists and designers, leading thinkers on urban design, key industry and government representatives as well as community activists. Together, they explore the design and role of media in the built environment and its implications for urban communities and ecosystems.
The theme of MAB's 6th edition is Future Implied, which opens up investigations into future scenarios implied in today’s urban transformations and emerging technologies like digital platforms, responsive technologies and smart city promises.

Window into the seas, one of the three projects nominated for the Animated Architecture Category of the MAB Awards. Image credits: DSM / Hauke Dressler

Role of the media

This year's theme, MAB20 General Chair, Martijn de Waal, explained: "We thought it was important to bring out a shift in how we talk and think about the role of media in the built environment. We wanted to move the discussion away from the spectacular experiences or convenient services that media architecture can provide. Instead, we want to engage in discussions on what it means for urban life, now that media technologies - from urban screens navigation apps on our phones - have become an indispensable part of our daily routines. We want to bring a value-based perspective to this debate and question: what does it mean to integrate all these technologies into the city and what implications result from this process?

Some highlights of the event:

The Student Awards and MAB Awards: an international competition for student work, for which we received no fewer than 120 submissions from all over the world, including from AUAS students.

The symposium on sustainable and inclusive city: The Center of Expertise for Creative Innovation (CoE) is organizing a symposium on the European Bauhaus Initiative in which the CoE is an official partner, entitled Digitalization as a vehicle for a sustainable and inclusive city.

The City Otherwise: Urban Imaginaries in Art and Design: on the role of imaginaries and storytelling in urban development.

MAB20 taking place online

This year, due to the ongoing global pandemic the Media Architecture Biennale had to be adapted and re-imagined in an online format for the first time. The biennale features 16 workshops, keynotes from different disciplines and from around the world, 15 symposia organised by multiple MAB Partners, two online exhibitions of student projects and demos, roundtables, academic paper presentations, demonstrations of new prototypes, and more.

The MAB20 Program will take place:
• From June 24th – 29th | Workshops | via Zoom
• From June 30th – July 2nd | Online Conference | via virtual conference platform

All sessions and activities (keynotes, paper sessions, symposia etc) will be held via
Zoom, recorded, and made available on the platform after each session. All recordings will stay available on-demand for MAB20 attendees until August 1st.