Monday | 27th MAY | ILARKS
Open Lecture Series 6.00 – 8.00 pm
Sandra PIESIK | 3 ideas Ltd – UCL Global Institute for Prosperity | UK
LEONARDO – a digital mind. HOMO VITRUVIANUS meeting Artificial Intelligence HOMO ARTIFICIALIS.
Coinciding with the 500th Anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci’s death, this lecture will explore tensions between Leonardo’s approach to understanding people and nature with the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Leonardo’s curiosity about nature and man, combined with scientific inquiry, led to some remarkable inventions that are part of our daily life today. Contemporary man HOMO TECHNICUS is exploring technology in various dimensions. One of these dimensions is aimed at creating a new relationship between people and machines seen in the attempt to create machines that mimic us. Artificial intelligence has entered our lives unnoticed, and as a society, we do not understand the full implications of the technological developments taking place right now, and over which we no longer have control. This lecture will reflect on HOMO VITRUVIANUS meeting HOMO ARTIFICIALIS through the choices which we are facing today in the context of existential threats: climate change and artificial intelligence.
Image: Poem Portraits, AI: More than Human, Exhibition in Barbican Centre, London
Dr Sandra Piesik is an award-winning architect, author and researcher specialising in adaptation of traditional knowledge systems, technology transfer, urban – rural dynamics and the implementation of global sustainable legislation. She is the founder of 3 ideas Ltd, a Policy Support Consultant for Rural – Urban Dynamics to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), a Visiting Professor at the UCL Global Institute for Prosperity, initiator of several RD&D groups and consortia including HABITAT Coalition. She is currently collaborating with the Paris Committee on Capacity Building, Adaptation Programme and Technology Mechanism of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as well as UNCCD, UN-HABITAT on The Guiding Principles for Urban-Rural Linkages for Advancing Integrated Territorial Development, The Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA) and the European Space Agency. Her published work includes Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture (Thames & Hudson 2012) and she is the general editor of the encyclopaedia, HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet (Thames & Hudson, Abrams Books, Flammarion, Editions Detail and Blume, 2017). This encyclopaedia is the first contemporary global review of vernacular architecture carried out in the past twenty years. The culmination of years of specialist research, it gathers together an international team of more than one hundred and forty leading experts from fifty counties across a diverse range of disciplines to examine what the traditions of vernacular architecture, and its regional craftspeople around the world, can teach
Manfredi LEONE | LandLabPA + DARCH/UNIPA | Palermo
“Mediterranean Communities for Resilient Landscapes”
A seguire il Prof. Manfredi Leone dell’Università di Palermo, che, attraverso i suoi lavori effettuati nel capoluogo siciliano al Parco Uditore ed alla Salita Raffadali, parlerà di come si innesta l’arte del paesaggio in ambienti con una comunità fortemente radicata nel territorio.
Prof. Manfredi Leone, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo. Landscaper and architectural designer, he is Vice-president at the Siciliy Section of the Italian Landscape Architects Association. AIAPP Board member of I-ASLA, Italian Scientific Society of Landscape Architecture. He is one of the authors of the Parco Uditore and Salita Raffadali in Palermo, has to his credit numerous interventions on landscape and the built environment and participations in urban planning designs. He is author of numerous national and international publications and has been Visiting Professor in the USA, Australia, Spain and France. At the University of Palermo he is director of the Laboratory of Landscape Architecture and also teaches Architectural Design. Along many years he has been developing research topics on various landscape themes, with a focus on the theme of coastal landscape, landscape of defenses and public space. 