Design Matters lecture series hosts NO.MAD founder Eduardo Arroyo

Eduardo Arroyo is the founder of NO.MAD, an architectural practice based in Madrid, Spain whose work combines precision, chance and necessity in search of the unknown.

Established in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1989, NO.MAD relocated to Madrid, Spain in 1996 where the firm continues to thrive, garnering international attention for their thought provoking designs and structures.

The firm has earned a reputation for creating buildings and urban structures that are situated between two opposite contemporary visions: a determinist world where we have to accept what is inherited and socially approved, and an arbitrary world ruled by uncontrolled chance and free will.

“NO.MAD’s voice is critical for the ongoing discourse about city building in Calgary, as the firm marries key modernist paradigms with a joy of life which animates those ideas,” says Marc Boutin, associate professor of architecture.

More recent projects include the Zurich Football Stadium (Switzerland), Lausanne Football Stadium (Switzerland), Miami Floating Stage (USA), Madrid Levene House (Spain), Penitentiary Complex in Salzburg (Austria) and the College Campus in Vienna (Austria).

Hosted by the Faculty of Environmental Design, the Design Matters lecture series welcomes Arroyo for a public lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 20 from 6-7:30 pm at the University of Calgary Downtown Campus, 906 8th Ave S.W. Entry is free for students and $10 for the general public.

Arroyo’s lecture, titled Fuzzy Creation, will explore the past 25 years of NO.MAD’s work creating buildings and urban structures within a European context.

The parameters guiding the firm’s working systems are founded in the constant exchange of information between the existing and what is yet to come. Through flexible processes, Arroyo will address the present conditions of the architectural practice, in which the unpredictable amounts to more than what can be expected.

The 2013-2014 Design Matters lecture series is sponsored by Gibbs Gage Architects, one of the largest architectural firms in Western Canada offering professional services in architecture, interior design, urban design.