AIA Middle East Lecture by Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto

Weaponized Craft

Seen through the lens of RUR’s ongoing project on urban transformation, our talk charts the long design gestation and ultimate building triumph of a series of public and private projects across the globe. From completion wins to speculative developments each project came with its own set of challenges: architectural, political and ecological. What Reiser+Umemoto learned from these projects was nothing short of late revelation on the centrality of craft and its surprising urban and cultural implications. 

In short, craft has unexpectedly returned to the architect.

Migrating from the job site into the exploratory space of the design studio, craft takes on new unprecedented dimensions. No longer strictly limited by material realities, or the routines of normative practice, the architect is free to engage with a project across scales and mediums, craft is, for Reiser+Umemoto, less a set of concrete techniques than an exploratory ethos. This radical mode of thinking and working is an ongoing dance between centuries-old and cutting-edge technologies. A crafty engagement with technology is essential; eluding the twin traps of conservative handicraft and process-based techno-purism. The practice seeks to chart a radically aesthetic passage between the two as the most resonant way to advance culture and society.

Like the effectiveness of the itinerant smiths of old and Lockheed’s mid-century Skunk Works, which existed within larger machines: economic, political or otherwise, Reiser+Umemoto continue to leverage the vitality of independent thought beyond the constraints of convention, in service to the world

• Location: AECOM Dubai Office, Ubora Tower, Level 43. Al Abraj St. Business Bay - Dubai

• Timing: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm