In the last two decades, the emergence of computation and digital fabrication in architectural discourse has spawned a genre of technologically enabled design research and pedagogy that has focused on generating, optimizing, describing, and fabricating complex forms and material constructs. However, in parallel, the world as we know it is experiencing major geopolitical shifts, environmental crises, and housing shortages.

How can design research leverage technology to respond, provoke, or engage with wider social and environmental issues to affect positive change in the world as we know it? In this context, the disciplinary imperatives for design novelty and technological innovation become the foundation for questioning, challenging, and changing the status quo of how the world around us operates.

Join the conversation surrounding the agency of design technologies as catalysts for exploring issues of urban ecology, affordable housing, and spatial justice. 

Presenters:

Larry Sass, Ph.D., MIT
Ersela Kripa, Texas Tech Univ.
Dana Cupkova, Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture + Epiphyte Lab

Moderators:

Alvin Huang, USC Architecture
Kyle Konis, Ph.D., USC Architecture