Starting from Research: Automated LandscapesStarting from Research: Automated Landscapes

The programme consists of a study trip with a group of local artists visiting factories (4 April) in Shenzhen, a workshop (22 April) and a performance-lecture (28 April) in Hong Kong.

Manifesto, in its purest form--as an uncompromising "call to change"-- offers a unique platform to isolate a certain challenge or issue, and discuss all possible objective and descriptive but also subjective and polemical means of dealing with it. This workshop focuses on creating manifestos for the post-human future. Participants will visit an automated factory, kitchen, and tailor shop in Shenzhen. Based on this experience and their own interests, individually or in groups, they will create manifestos on post-human existence. The manifestos can take different forms, text, music, performance, and so on.

In this new era where machines and technologies like AI (artificial intelligence) are taking over much of human manual work, will the creation of art be the exception? What roles will robots play in society in the future? The urban research project "Automated Landscapes," conducted by Het Nieuwe Instituut, focuses on the incursion of AI and automation in the built environment. Project researcher Merve Bedir will discuss the roles of humans and robots in the post-human future.

Automated Landscapes is a long-term collaborative research initiative on the implications of automation for the built environment, launched in 2017 by Het Nieuwe Instituut, and directed by its Research department. Under the premise that automation disrupts not only labour markets, but the configuration, design and occupation of entire territories, Automated Landscapes documents and reflects upon the emerging architectures and urbanisms of automated labour. Given that they are not only designed for the inhabitation of human bodies, these architectures could potentially challenge conventional spatial requirements and normative rules for health, safety, and welfare, such as standards for light, ventilation, height, and floor areas, and bring new forms of territorial occupation, segregation, and contestation.

Merve Bedir is adjunct assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, Department of Architecture. She holds a PhD from Delft University of Technology, and a BArch from Middle East Technical University (Ankara). Merve's research largely focuses on the politics of the production of urban space, and in particular on architecture and design in relation to the environment, technology, and commons. Merve is the co-founder of Land and Civilisation Compositions (Rotterdam / Hong Kong), and Aformal Academy (Shenzhen), an independent school for the city. She has published in AD Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, Volume, and Funambulist, among others, and her work has been reviewed in The Guardian, Avery Review, and Metropolis.

Marten Kuijpers is an architect and researcher based in Rotterdam, and currently Senior Researcher at Het Nieuwe Instituut. He studied architecture at the University of Technology in Eindhoven (graduated with distinction in 2008). Marten curated the lectures and debates program of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) between 2010 and 2013. Since then, he has been responsible for the program track Landscape & Interior within Het Nieuwe Instituut's Research department. Marten was curator of several exhibitions at the institute, including "Munich 1972" (2016), and "Architecture of Appropriation" (2017). His current research focuses on the implications of automation for the built environment, based on present-day case studies in the Netherlands and the Pearl River Delta region. His work has been published in Harvard Design Magazine, The Site Magazine and Metropolis M, among others.