Prof. Andrew Witt from Harvard University will be a guest at the USil Faculty of Humanities between 19 June and 2 July 2023.
Numerous lectures, workshops and consultations have been planned within the research and education project entitled ‘Analysis of education and research in the context of the need of job market and business partners.’ The event is addressed to all interested educational and research employees, students and PhD students of the University of Silesia and the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice.
Prof. Andrew Witt visits the University of Silesia on the invitation of Małgorzata Kądziela, PhD from the USil Institute of Culture Studies.
Guest profile:
Andrew Witt is an Associate Professor in Practice in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, teaching and researching on the relationship of geometry and machines to perception, design, construction, and culture. Trained as both an architect and mathematician, he has a particular interest in a technically synthetic and logically rigorous approach to form. Prof. Witt is also co-founder, with Tobias Nolte, of Certain Measures, a Boston/Berlin-based design and technology studio that combines imagination and evidence for systemic and scalable approaches to spatial problems. Their clients include large manufacturers, material fabricators, government agencies, infrastructure companies, investment funds, medical startups, and cultural institutions. The work of Certain Measures is in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, and has been exhibited at the Pompidou (twice), the Barbican Centre, Futurium, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, among others. In 2017, Certain Measures were finalists for the Zumtobel Award in both the Young Professionals and Applied Innovation Categories.
Witt has a longstanding research interest in the disciplinary exchanges between design and science, particularly through the media and visualizations of mathematics. He is the author of Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2021), an expansive examination of the visual, methodological, and epistemic connections between design, mathematics, and the broader sciences. He is also the author of Light Harmonies: The Rhythmic Photographs of Heinrich Heidersberger (Hatje Cantz, 2014), the first English treatment of German proto-computational photographic hacker Heinrich Heidersberger’s light-drawing machines. For the Canadian Centre for Architecture, he has authored Studies in the Design Laboratory, a trilogy of case studies that examine how and why architects who developed laboratories in the 1960s and 1970s and what these laboratories reveal about the cultural research practices of design.
He is a fellow of the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Macdowell, a Graham Foundation, a World Frontiers Forum Pioneer (2018) and Young Pioneer (2017), and a 2015 nominee for the Chernikov Prize. He has been awarded a number of patents, including for geometric rationalizations of complex geometry and large-scale collaborative software systems.
Witt was previously Director of Research at Gehry Technologies and a director at GT’s Paris, France office, where he solved complex geometric challenges for clients including Gehry Partners, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, UN Studio, and Coop Himmelb(l)au, and projects such as Fondation Louis Vuitton and Louvre Abu Dhabi. He also developed prototypes for new software design tools such as GTeam (now Trimble Connect, acquired by Trimble in 2014).
Meetings schedule
Between 19 June and 1 July 2023, Prof. Andrew Witt will be taking part in research, close consultations and seminars for employees and PhD students of the USil Institute of Culture Studies and the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian University of Technology. He will also take part in closed consultations, workshops and seminars for students of cultural studies, media culture and architecture.
On Thursday, 29 June 2023, at 1 p.m., Prof. A. Witt will deliver an open lecture devoted to the relations between science, new technologies and design. Another open lecture is scheduled at 5 p.m., this time on Creative Design. The events take place in A. Pawlikowski Lecture Hall at the USil Faculty of Humanities.
In order to join the meeting, you have to fill out the registration form. Registration for both meetings starts on 15 June at 1 p.m. and will close on 28 June at 1 p.m. Links to the registration forms will be shared after their launch.
Project ‘Analysis of education and research in the context of the need of job market and business partners. Project realised in cooperation with Prof. Andrew Witt from Harvard University’ was co-financed by the Metropolis GZM under the Metropolitan Science Support Fund Programme in the years 2022-2024