Einhorn Lecture
Andrew Saunders
Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design
Public Lecture - Baroque Topologies: From Surveying to Scanning
November 13, 5:30 p.m, Slocum Atrium
Baroque Topologies explores the potential of LiDAR scanning to transform how architecture is represented, analyzed, and understood. Focusing on eighteen Baroque church interiors in Italy, the lecture examines how point cloud technologies offer an alternative to conventional methods of architectural representation and analysis. Unlike traditional projection-based techniques, LiDAR captures architecture as a continuous spatial field, preserving the complex relationships between geometry, ornament, material, and light. Through the work of six architects, Pietro da Cortona, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini, Carlo Rainaldi, Guarino Guarini, and Bernardo Vittone, the research reveals distinct spatial strategies that have historically challenged architectural representation. Situating LiDAR within the broader historic relationship of surveying technologies and representation, the lecture presents novel forms of representation that demonstrate how contemporary methods of spatial capture reveal previously inaccessible perspectives and offer new ways to reassess the spatial complexity of the Baroque interior.
graduate workshop review: Baroque Topologies
November 16, 5 p.m, Slocum Atrium
This workshop provides an overview of the Baroque and considers its contemporary implications for architectural thought and practice. Students will employ analytical reconstruction as a means of reconsidering the geometric principles underlying seventeenth-century architecture. Through the reconstruction and analysis of church floor plans, they will investigate the operative relationships among geometric construction, architectural form, and spatial effect. Students will then be introduced to techniques of three-dimensional laser scanning and methods for working with point-cloud data.
Throughout the workshop, architectural representation will be treated not simply as a means of documenting existing conditions but as an analytical instrument. By bringing methods of formal analysis into dialogue with contemporary techniques of digital surveying and analytical modeling, the workshop asks students to reconsider the continuing relevance of Baroque geometry and its capacity to inform contemporary modes of architectural representation, analysis, and design.
2026-27 Design Research Workshop Series
The theme of the ’26–’27 workshops, “LIVING TECTONICS: On the Agency of Computation and Material Latency” frames design as an active negotiation between the unseen computational intelligence of form and the physical feedback of matter. Moving away from traditional notions of static building or deterministic construction, this workshop series investigates how agency operates across multiple registers: the agency of form through deep topological re-coding; the agency of data in simulating dynamic landscapes; the agency of material chemistry through bio-inspired substance; and the agency of robotic assembly where real-time execution generates visceral spatial affects.
