Record of the webinar
Architecture Beyond The Cupola,
by Alberto Pugnale & Alberto Bologna,
held on June 11, 2024

WEBINAR SHORT ABSTRACT

Architecture Beyond the Cupola” presents the Binishell, an innovative and automated construction technique to generate and build thin concrete shell and dome structures. Dante Bini invented this construction system in 1964 near Bologna, Italy. The concept involves casting a reinforced concrete structure on the ground, which is then gradually raised using air. This book focuses on the architectural implications of designing shell structures through automated construction techniques, and it aims to showcase Dante Bini’s inventions, designs and built projects. At the same time, the ambition has been to explore the past to better understand the current trends and developments in digital design and fabrication. The hope is to inspire and inform the potential future uses of innovative construction automation techniques and the next generation of new architectural forms and languages.

SHORT BIO OF THE PRESENTERS

Dr. Alberto Pugnale is an Architect and Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of The University of Melbourne, where he co-directs the Advanced Digital Design + Fabrication (ADD+F) Research Hub. In 2007, he won the IASS HANGAI Prize for young researchers under 30. In 2023, he received the IASS Tsuboi Award for a research project on shell and tensile structures generated by AI from historical precedents. He was an assistant professor at Aalborg University in Denmark (2010-12) and is regularly invited to lecture and coordinate workshops in various countries. He is a member of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) and the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ). For more information, visit: www.albertopugnale.com

Dr. Alberto Bologna is an architect and an Associate Professor in Architectural Design at the Faculty of Architecture – Department of Architecture and Design (DiAP) at the Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). Alberto has a PhD in Architectural History and an MSc in Architecture and Construction. His research is focused on design cultures that are rooted in construction principles and he investigates the relationship between form, structure, tectonics, ornament and spatial quality in contemporary architecture and engineering. From 2011 to 2015, he was a post-doc scientist at the EPFL–École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland. From 2017 to 2020, he was a fixed-term Assistant Professor (RTDa) in Architectural Design at the Politecnico di Torino (Italy). Between 2018 and 2019, he was a visiting scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing (China), where he taught design studios on exposed concrete. Alberto also worked as an Adjunct Professor in Architectural Design and Theory at the University of Genoa (2015-16), the University of Ferrara (2016-17), the Politecnico di Milano (2016-17 and 2020-21), the Politecnico di Torino (2015-17), and the SUPSI–University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (2020-21). Alberto has authored several books that investigated the relationship between architectural design and construction, including “Pier Luigi Nervi negli Stati Uniti” (Firenze University Press, 2013), “The rhetoric of Pier Luigi Nervi. Concrete and ferrocement forms” (with R. Gargiani, EPFL Press-Routledge, 2016), “The resistance of Laugier. The classicism of Murcutt” (LetteraVentidue, 2019), and “Chinese Brutalism Today. Concrete and avant-garde architecture” (ORO Editions, 2019). He is a member of the editorial board of several international peer-reviewed journals and a correspondent for the Swiss architectural magazine “Archi”.

DATE

The webinar took place on June 11, 2024, at 14:00 (CET), on the Zoom platform.

Below is a transcription of the chat during the webinar