Accelerate@CERN Austria

Architects always had and have to connect to physical ’realities’ and models of physics. This is becoming all the more true for current and future developments in the field, as a short description of the book “Disappearing Architecture. From Real to Virtual to Quantum, edited by Georg Flachbart and Peter Weibel described some years ago:

“For architects, the challenge of the future will increasingly lie in creatively coming to terms with hybrid environments, understanding and exploiting the design potential of digital spaces within the physical world, and re-defining the role of architecture within a visually dominated culture.”

Current architects are influenced by theories of particle physics using them as a jumping off point, e.g. Jacques Herzog have talked about how physics has inspired new thinking in structure and form in their buildings.

Accelerate@CERN Austria is a collaboration between CERN and the Department of Arts of the Federal Chancellery of Austria. This new award offers the possibility for the first time for an architect to spend a fully funded month at CERN and develop an architectural project inspired by the laboratory’s investigations into the material world and the construction of the universe.

Accelerate@CERN is an extended research stay at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research). As the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and home to the LHC at 27kilometers the largest machine constructed by mankind, CERN is a highly regarded centre for investigating time, space and the limits of the material world. The laboratory with its great minds and science offers the perfect environment to host and inspire an architect who is interested in developing their work in new and surprising dimensions. It also has a track record in impressive creating structures like the detectors and the LHC, which do not exist anywhere else on the planet.