#68: Leire Asensio Villoria and David Mah — Systems Upgrade

Leire Asensio Villoria and David Mah on decoding and upgrading design systems, reverse engineering the creative process, knowledge dissemination, the long tail of niches, Erwin Hauer and associative models, book writing and publishing, and much more. Leire Asensio is a senior lecturer in urban design and architecture and Co-Director of the Advance Digital Design + Fabrication (ADD+F) at the University of Melbourne’s school of design. David Mah is a senior lecturer in urban design and architecture at the University of Melbourne’s school of design. Previously, both Leire and David were lecturers at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (2010-2017), design research leads for the Health and Places Initiative, a research collaboration that studied the links between the built environment and health outcomes, and taught design and theory at Cornell University’s department of architecture (2006-2010) and Landscape Urbanism at the graduate design school of the Architectural Association in London (2004-2007). Leire and David have worked within several international design practices, including Zaha Hadid Architects, FOA (David), or Arup (Leire), engaging in the design and delivery of urban designs and architectural projects Leire and David have been collaborating as asensio_mah since 2002. They’ve authored the books Systems Upgrade: (Re)fabricating Tectonic Prototypes (2022, Actar) and Lifestyled: Health and Places (2016, Jovis) and have been active in the production of architectural and creative works, exhibited internationally including at the Royal Academy of Art in London and The Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and featured in professional books and journals published by Birkhauser, Evolo, Lars Muller, Actar and Routledge amongst others. In this episode, we discuss their latest book, Systems Upgrade , which offers a design research approach that leverages the embodied knowledge latent within the material legacies of design history for direct applicability in creative practice. Books Systems Upgrade by Leire Asensio Villoria and David Mah The Long Tail by Chris Anderson Translations from Drawing to Building by Robin Evans Links Suture curve Continua surface Reconstruction of the Dresden cathedral Sagrada Familia Visual programming Grasshopper Dynamo Digital Project The Long Tail by Chris Anderson in WIRED Nike by You Objectile by Bernard Cache and Patrick Beaucé Actar DALL-E by OpenAI Midjourney Stable Diffusion People mentioned Erwin Hauer Enrique Rosado Joseph Albers Sheila Hicks Jørn Utzon Miguel Fisac Buckminster Fuller Eladio Dieste Victor Papanek Antoni Gaudí Chris Anderson Robin Evans Chapters 00:00 · Introduction 00:36 · Erwin Hauer 02:22 · Associative models 04:18 · Erwin Hauer's model making 07:03 · Limitations of digital tools 09:39 · Systems Upgrade book 11:10 · Reverse engineering 26:09 · Decoding Erwin Hauer 30:21 · Authorship and knowledge dissemination 36:48 · Visual programming 41:39 · Selling less of more 46:54 · Individualizing everything 49:23 · Context 53:18 · Book writing and publishing 01:02:49 · Creative process 01:11:13 · AI content generation 01:17:42 · Thanks 01:18:43 · Outro I'd love to hear from you. Submit a question about this or any previous episodes. Join the Discord community . Meet other curious minds. If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps. Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast . Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0. Follow Nono Twitter.com/nonoesp Instagram.com/nonoesp Facebook.com/nonomartinezalonso YouTube.com/nonomartinezalonso

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#68: Leire Asensio Villoria and David Mah — Systems Upgrade is an episode from The Getting Simple Podcast by Nono Martínez Alonso.

This episode is 01:18:58 long.

This episode was published on Sep 30, 2022.

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