In August Space Syntax director Ed Parham was a guest lecturer as part of the Architectural Association’s visiting school in Lima, Peru.

The school was run by local architects Federico Dunkelberg and Sophie Le Bienvenue, and supported by the British Council. The focus of the school was in a part of Lima where small scale textile manufacturing is embedded in dense urban fabric.

Students generated proposals to transport materials at one moment, while also transporting people, or forming street furniture at other times. The machines themselves were designed and visualised using parametric software such as Rhino and Grasshopper, before being physically prototyped using a Kuka bending robot.

As part of the course, Space Syntax software was taught to students to provide them with a tool to understand urban contexts more precisely, and to define how their transport machines could change role in different parts of the city.

A summary of the visiting school’s work in Lima can be seen here.

During this week, a series of accompanying public lectures also took place, including lectures on computational architecture by Foster and Partners and the future of transport by Arup. Ed took part in this series, showing Space Syntax’s recent developments in urban analytics. The event was hosted by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture and, as a result of being over-subscribed many times, it was broadcast on the Ministry of Culture TV Channel.