In 2012, Tomás Saraceno was the inaugural Visiting Artist at MIT’s new Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). An artist trained as an architect, Saraceno deploys theoretical frameworks and insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics and materials science. His residency at MIT focuses on advancing new work for the ongoing Cloud Cities series, in which Saraceno creates inflatable and airborne biospheres with the morphology of soap bubbles, spider webs, neural networks, or cloud formations, which are speculative models for alternate ways of living.

Introduced by Faculty Director of MIT CAST Evan Ziporyn, Saraceno discussed the speculative context and experimental materials of his Cloud Cities with Nader Tehrani and Anton Garcia-Abril in this public lecture occurred on Thursday, November 15, 2012.

Nader Tehrani, Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT, Principal and Founder of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration; Anton Garcia-Abril is Professor of Architecture at MIT and founder of ENSAMBLE STUDIO, a firm committed to architectural application of conceptual and structural experimentation.