On Thursday, April 22, 2021, at 12 noon ET, Anne Beim will present a lunchtime lecture via Zoom.

Please RSVP to Jeff Fitton ([email protected]) to receive a Zoom invitation. This lecture is open to members of the Harvard community.

Anne Beim is a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture. She holds an MArch and a PhD in architecture from the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture. As a visiting PhD scholar, she studied under the late Professor Marco Frascari and Professor David Leatherbarrow at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Since 2004, she has been Chair of CINARK – Centre for Industrialized Architecture – a research center that works across the gap between architectural education, the construction industry and the architectural profession. Since 2014, she has co-chaired the graduate program SET – Settlement, Ecology and Tectonics.

From 2013 -2019, Professor Beim was chairman of the Danish Architectural Association’s Admissions Council and from 2008-2010, she chaired the Architectural Committee for the Danish Art Foundation. Presently, she is a member of the Executive Council of the International Association of Structures and Architecture (IASA).

Professor Beim’s research objective is on how architectural ideas are transformed into constructions, defined through building culture (craft & industry) and based on tectonic theories.

Her research topics include the ecological dimension in architecture, how architectural know-how can inform the construction industry/industrialization in construction, and how architectural qualities can be improved by clever use of materials, construction design and detailing.

She has also authored/co-authored multiple books: Circular Construction: Materials, Architecture & Tectonics (2019), Sustainability in Scandinavia: Architectural Design and Planning (2018), Towards an Ecology of Tectonics – The Need for Rethinking Construction in Architecture (2015), Building with an eye for the Future: Visions in Industrial Housing 1970 – 2011 (2012), Three Ways to Assembling a House (2009), Tectonic Visions in Architecture (2004), and Ecology & Architecture Quality (2002).

Real Possibilities and Possible Realities: Absolute Sustainable Architecture, Materials and Tectonics

The latest reports from UNEP, IEA and WWF point out that Man’s exploitation of nature’s resources, high emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere and worldwide waste streams have resulted in ecological systems out of balance when looking at the carrying capacity of the Earth. In this context, buildings and the construction sector are responsible for almost 40% of energy- and process-related emissions as well as the consumption of 40% of material resources (UNEP et al., 2019).

Thus, the ecological crisis calls for self-examination in the professional part of the construction sector, but also in academia amongst researchers and educators of architecture, planning and engineering. We are in a state of emergency and a growing number of experts proclaim that we have to act now, that we have to consider all potential solutions, and that the most effective ones must be implemented. This situation opens up new ways of conceiving architecture and tectonic building cultures that contain radically different solutions than those applied in present-day architecture and construction. In this talk, Professor Anne Beim will present a series of physical prototypes where absolute sustainable scenarios have been tested, resulting in new approaches to materials, construction techniques and how buildings are conceived and designed from a lifecycle perspective.