Matter for the senses
Given the shift to an increasingly cybernetic world and the information era which is now building an augmented reality, how does the sensory dimension of the architectural experience connect to the prospect of a dual materiality, made of waves and bytes, both informed by the ergonomic immersion of humans in publicized interaction with their surroundings? How then is the relation between body and space organized, starting from gestures which calibrate and grasp materiality?

Matter as energy
Given the obligation to optimize the energy consumption of our buildings in keeping with the increasing rarity and/or emergence of energy sources, how does managing the environmental footprint of resource materials become a key vector in framing positive-energy projects?

Matter as structure
Given the revolution of the past 10 years in digital technology and energy, coupled with advances in the development of new materials, how is structural engineering reconfiguring the way it calculates and its models while constantly optimizing the static and dynamic performance of its objects.

Matter as a source of innovation
Given our contemporary nanometric perspective, and scope for determining the physical qualities and properties of material in which instruments are embedded, making it programmable, how is applied research, or R&D in cellulose, cement and glass firms, fashioning smart materials or more broadly smart surfaces? Such materials do not just contribute to producing architectural envelopes, but become the quasi-subjects and/or objects of interactive ergonomics, multi-sensory components repositioning humans in a relational dynamic with their environment.

Matter as information
Given the instrumentation  of matter, the convergence of bytes and atoms in the definition of the attributes of our contemporary materiality, how does architecture, and in particular its envelopes, integrate the spread of ubiquitous space in an invisible layer of information superimposed on physical reality to build a data continuity which assimilates matter and information?

Matter as ambiance
Given the digital revolution and the outlook for the environment, how can contemporary architecture, seen from a morphogenetic and atmospheric perspective, bring new order, in the definition of its materiality, related to both a pragmatic understanding of usage and the energy performance of its envelopes? How does the phenomenological and cultural re-inscription of a technical object change the processes by which we design, understand and appropriate our environment?

Drawing on these sub-themes, the second aim of the symposium is to map out the modalities of hybridization and cross-breeding, which supersede sector-specific approaches and enable us to establish iconic design paths, specific to the new forms of materiality at work in the 21st century, and which may be characterized by deploying innovative pedagogy, in research and industry, but also in project management.