110th Annual Meeting

Cast & Place, the 2017 winner of the annual City of Dreams pavilion competition, was a pavilion whose design centered on material reuse. The pavilion consisted of a series of panels, each made from recycled aluminum cast into a unique pattern formed by clay that had dried and cracked. Since the pavilion was a temporary installation, only on view on Governors Island (New York, NY) from June to November 2017, it was critical that the design accounted for how the panels would be utilized after de-installation so that they would not simply become waste. This paper focuses on the transformation of the panels after the disassembly of the Cast & Place pavilion and how planning for these transformations influenced the pavilion’s design. Some of the panels remained intact and were exhibited as artwork while others were converted into stools, benches, and an arbor.

This research project looks towards new possibilities for designing and making architectural elements and systems with living organisms, upcycled waste, and 3D printing technologies. In line with the 2021 ACSA conference theme, EMPOWER, this research seeks the empowerment of architecture to address our current climate crisis by advancing processes of designing and making architecture with living systems. Through a collaboration with living organisms, advances in symbiotic relationship between humans and non-humans are formed, and new possibilities emerge for architectural design, fabrication, and speculation, that challenge traditional and conventional methods of design and making in a post-human world. The project seeks opportunities for a paradigm shift in architectural design, from ‘systems thinking’ to ‘living systems thinking’, offering new possibilities and raising questions regarding approaches to architectural design and fabrication. How can we (humans) empower non-human organisms to collaborate within a design and fabrication process? What are the opportunities for architectural design when we shift from ‘systems thinking’ to ‘living systems thinking’? How can we embed growing, living, ‘vibrant matter’ [1] in the process of making? How can we advance and improve upon the methods in which we collect and upcycle waste materials that are biodegradable to increase positive impacts on our environment? Can we rethink what we discard, to reduce the use of plastics and other environmentally harmful materials, and advance ecological practices in architecture? The project seeks to address these questions through applied research, and the development of techniques and workflows that demonstrate a method for advancing methods of making. This work and research encompasses a range of topics including computational design, living systems, waste, upcycling, circular economies, bio-design and bio-aesthetics.

This study outlines the development of clay and ceramic-based living biocomposite materials under minimal moisture environments. The biocomposites supported live and metabolically active photosynthetic microorganisms (microalgae). The work sets out laboratory testing strategies to assess the limiting conditions for life within living materials to inform the conditions needed for sustained operation. Combinations of clay/ceramic-based substrate types, nutrient loadings, amounts of moisture exposures, and operation times were explored. As a result, microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris) colonized both clay and ceramic forms, showing operational longevity of 100 days, even with low nutrient exposure. Further iterations of these sustainable living materials may prove useful for local potential carbon dioxide removal to improve air quality and reduce the carbon footprint and operation costs of mechanically ventilated spaces.

New York City (NYC) must innovatively respond to the socio-spatial challenges of accelerating e-commerce growth. The city’s constrained urban grid faces substantial truck freight induced traffic congestion and pollution—a dangerous set of externalities that undermine NYC’s quality of life and economic development potential. This paper posits that the establishment of a Harlem based multi-sided-platform (MSP) that supports public community alliances with the logistics sector can help NYC: (1) catalyze economic development, (2) foster sustainability, and (3) improve quality of life. Two underutilized segments of NYC’s infrastructure can be symbiotically leveraged to foster this alliance: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). A licensing agreement between 3rd-party logistics (3PL) providers and the MTA can permit relatively unobtrusive nightly freight transport through the subway in exchange for right-of-use fees. Additionally, public-private partnerships between the logistics industry and NYCHA can enable the development of disaggregated and hyper-local community distribution hubs (HCDH) throughout its reportedly underutilized land. The newly formed network HCDHs can scale across NYCHA and link to accessible MTA subway lines to receive and consolidate small-package freight within close proximity of its destination. A private 3PL provider can operate these HCDHs and complete “The Last Mile” of delivery cheaply and ecologically by deploying e-bike and on-foot couriers. Furthermore, the proposed logistics network can serve as a vital piece of NYC urban infrastructure that doubles as a mechanism for community level socio-economic revitalization. In other words, not only can this proposed network help address NYC logistics and public health challenges but it can also provide significant local economic development opportunities on and around NYCHA sites in the form of: new revenue streams, improved public amenities, and employment. Financial support for such intervention can come from the public and private sector as governments pledge billions of dollars to decarbonize and as businesses work to minimize the high costs of Last Mile delivery.

While public spaces within the historic urban fabric of Yazd, Iran, have for centuries functioned as a venue for the Muharram mourning rituals, modern urban spaces in the newer parts of the city have in the past few decades hosted an unprecedented form of collective gathering—one that unlike mourning ceremonies are festive, spontaneous, amorphous, and lack organization. These events, that for example include gatherings in celebration of sport achievements, can be categorized as what Asef Bayat refers to as nonmovements—a form of everyday resistance without recognizable leadership, organization, or ideology. Building upon an earlier quantitative study that I conducted on the participation of the resident of Yazd, Iran, in such gathering, I articulate the result of the survey and ethnographic findings to suggest that urban settings can become a site for the ordinary actors of nonmovement to find their collective agency and channel their shared grievances into an organized/politicized force for change. By deifying the sociopolitical order of the state, the urban subaltern creates a space in which 1) political sovereignty of the state seems revoked, 2) its moral authority is suspended, 3) and differences in class, gender, race are momentarily withdrawn. Such events thus qualify as a Bakhtinian Carnivals where the “official seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to […] change” loses its symbolic authority. Looking back at the interviews with participants in carnival nonmovement occurring at the streets of Yazd, which I conducted more than a decade ago, I conclude by showing how the public quality of streets allows the civic society to reclaim its right to the city through incremental but pervasive acts of carnival resistance. This carnival experience eventually enables the urban grassroots to mobilize by linking their non-collective struggles to broader sociopolitical demands. The process in which carnival defiance from authoritative order allows nonmovements to build collective political capital can help understand political demonstrations such as the Green Movement of 2009, which was arguably the predecessor to the Arab Spring. It also repositions the political on the urban map by emphasizing the power of public space in building and maintaining a healthy civic society. A rereading of the “right to the city,” as articulated by Henri Lefebvre, brings urban spaces to the forefront of everyday struggles of the urban subaltern. Urban space is thus not an indifferent backdrop to socioeconomic resistance, but an actor with power and agency.

“Lima 2100: Collective Resilience through Adaptive Urbanism” is a transdisciplinary project addressing issues of climate change, social equity, and urban health in Lima, Peru. The project was developed through international collaboration and partnership of the Zero1, the U.S. Embassy in Peru, the Contemporary Art Museum (MAC Lima), the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC), and 21 participating artists, architects, and activists. Focusing on the challenge of urban development in Lima, the primary goal was to empower local residents with new skills and collaboratively develop a framework to understand and respond to their built environment past, present, and future. This was expressed through personal works of adaptive urbanism to create collective resilience, drawing inspiration from global movements such as Black Lives Matter to a history of Peruvian activism rooted in indigenous culture and female leadership. The project describes a method of utilizing art and technology as platforms for discourse to envision speculative futures of urban environments that are inclusive, healthy, and sustainable. Originally conceived of as a physical exchange in Lima, the project was restructured as a month-long virtual exchange due to the COVID pandemic, adapting technology to use open-source and web-based software that was accessible to a larger base of participants in Lima. The program included theoretical group discussions, an international symposium, and technology workshops in augmented and virtual reality to assist the participants with tools to create their own worlds. The multidisciplinary team leading the project included architects and artists from the U.S. and Peru who’s work focuses on inclusive and participatory design of public spaces developed collaboratively with local residents. A final body of work developed individually by each participant illustrates their visions of a resilient Lima in the year 2100 that was displayed in a virtual reality gallery for the MAC. This body of work includes themes of reclaiming historical narratives from colonial monuments, inclusivity of the Quechua indigenous population within the urban environment, climate fictions that draw awareness to the relationship between the city and surrounding ecosystem, and many more. The project serves as a model of international collaboration between government, non-profit, arts, and academia that seeks to amplify the voices of underserved and marginalized communities to envision adaptive urbanism that reflects a just environment.

This paper examines the relationship between the evolution of ornament and the more recent application of digital technologies to extend functionality and aesthetics of surfaces within the built environment. Within this context, the paper presents case studies in design-build education and professional research applications to provide examples of the incorporation of these tools and concepts into design workflows. Architectural ornament has seen a resurgence with the application of digital design and fabrication tools. Concurrently, ornament has shifted from purely symbolic function to high performance facades that conserve energy, or, in some cases, generate their own. Coupled with this high-performance metric is a renewed interest in expressive textures and articulated facades made largely possible by digital manufacturing. The tools that support innovative designs have also found success in replicating and restoring historic structures, thus broadening their impact and relevance to the profession. Moreover, from an ecological perspective, digitally-derived ornamentation may have the potential to address the emerging crises of species extinction and habitat loss, particularly near urban areas where the cumulative surface area of buildings and hardened landscapes exceeds that of natural settings by several orders of magnitude. These architectural, urban and landscape surfaces represent an opportunity to facilitate life itself within the built environment, and in many ways, could be the designer’s greatest opportunity to include biodiversity as criteria for design of sustainable and resilient built environments. From the manufacturing side, digital tools leave a signature, or “maker’s mark,” that, if harnessed, can enhance textures with functionality at multiple scales. A working knowledge of CNC tools and toolpaths can provide standardized and custom textures that can be paired with natural habitats. This requires the designer to understand the tools and work closely with manufacturers toward these types of applications for digital design and fabrication. In many ways, this further justifies the incorporation of these tools into pedagogical models in architectural education to give students a working knowledge of how and when to introduce these powerful design tools.

INTRODUCTION PX-Alpha Operator is a research investigation based on an internationally filed patent by the author(s), focused on human-robot interaction and robotic control/motion in the field of design and digital fabrication. Using hardware solutions, PX-Alpha Operator enables users—with limited or no programming background, to control, design and execute robotic motion-paths, without needing any additional software package or advanced coding knowledge. Operating as a hardware plug-in, PX-Alpha Operator—as a device, can be added to any KUKA robot with the 4th generation controller—KRC4, regardless of the robot’s type and payload. PX-Alpha Operator aims to make realtime robotic interaction more accessible to designers—especially in the field of architecture, by simplifying some of the advanced programming aspects of the process. METHODOLOGY: Invented at the [Hidden-for-peer-review] lab, and internationally secured under the patent cooperation treaty (PCT), PX-Alpha Operator as a project-based research is focused on three central themes: 1-Examining the potentials of hardware platforms, as possibly more intuitive interfaces for designers/users with limited technical/programming background, to enable users to use advanced machines—such as KUKA industrial robot arms, with less programming. 2-Proposing a cost-effective in-house solution for human-robot interaction in the field of design and with a focus on accessibility and usability. 3-Developing a hardware-bridge between the KUKA robotic operation system and easy-to-use creative/interactive programming platforms. In light of the mentioned themes, PX-Alpha Operator was developed and tested at the [Hidden-for-peer-review]. Architecture students—with limited or no programming background, have been asked to develop and control a robotic motion/task using PX-Alpha Operator and their software interface of choice. Throughout the testing process and as a method to evaluate the success of PX-Alpha Operator, participants with no programming and coding background have been selected to use PX-Alpha Operator in conjunction with a simple Grasshopper 3D code, as a way to design and execute their first robotic motion design for robotic videography of an architectural physical model. (discussed in more detail and with figures in the full paper). RESULTS: Tested as part of an ongoing installation series, PX-Alpha Operator demonstrated the capability of adopting different input systems. Ranging from custom-made multi-material fabrication processes, to interactive gesture-based installation, to safety-oriented stop/play operations, until now PX-Alpha Operator successfully employed various common inputs in the field of architecture, including but not limited to Kinect—depth-sensing camera, Arduino analog sensors, image-based inputs, and voice recognition triggers (discussed in more detail and with figures in the full-paper). Theses applications along with the comparison between the users with or without technical background, demonstrated that PX-Alpha Operator can make it possible for users with limited programming skills to create realtime robotic interactions easier. DISCUSSION: PX-Alpha Operator as part of a bigger body of design-research on HMI, is in its early stages of development. This research project seeks possible new methods to amplify the rising critical voice regarding the idea of democratization of design/fabrication tools and increasing their accessibility.

Employing AI models in generative systems has shifted such protocols, moving beyond the deterministic rule-based parametric systems, offering new possibilities and defining new design systems. AI techniques, such as deep learning, are referred to as “Learning Systems” since they learn directly from data and provide “unexpected” answers. The design space has become more flexible and adaptive to change and to the insertion of new computational models. Yet, the fact that AI models are independently learning on their own, raises issues with designers’ control over the process. More recently, models that bridge natural language processing and computer-vision such as Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training (CLIP) have been integrated into representation deep learning models such as StyleGAN, combining the generative and classification functionalities. This way, to some degree, a certain level of designer’s agency can be attained when encoding design intentions using text prompts to modify the generative process, which was the motivation of this work. We investigate here the issue of prototyping a new design system with employing language-based models and deep learning models in a new design system. Our methodology involves experimenting with the targeted deep learning models, prototyping a new framework with language-based models are integrated into a generative system, and testing the prototype by applying the proposed system to a design case. In the test-case application, first, 2200 images of floor plans of office buildings were curated. Next, a generative deep learning model was employed to generate new design options (through a StyleGAN training process). Third, a language model (CLIP) was coupled with the trained GAN model to modify the latent space in two experiments: (1) CLIP+StyleGAN, and (2) StyleGAN-NADA. The resulting generative model was modified using a set of text-prompts that describe the intended design alteration. Results of the test-case application show successful approaches to guiding the generative process, and offer insights into associated potentials and limitations, as discussed in the paper.

My recent collaborative project [AI]stanbul: Schooling the Machine, specifically designed for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, aims to incorporate digital technologies to understand our connection, as humans, with “place” by utilizing interactive tools. [AI]stanbul has been designed as a curious machine that aims to become a “virtual native.” It acquires and appropriates place-based experiences through interactions with visitors/participants. The conversations take the form of both natural language and image-based interactions all of which are tied to an Istanbul map. On the one hand, [AI]stanbul is designed to become more intelligent as visitors share their memories, daily experiences, and practical information about the city; it then visualizes the urban experiences of its users absorbing their daily routines about transportation, design, places to eat and visit in Istanbul. On the other hand, the memories that [AI]stanbul “borrows” from its users and turn into data form the basis of the machine learning algorithm that can be used for understanding global cross-experiences and hybrid permutations in different cities. [AI]stanbul collected data throughout the Biennial. In this paper, I will (1) analyze and discuss the collected anonymous data, (2) investigate possible complex representations of the relationship between design and urban environment based on daily practices, (3) problematize the possible ethical discussions that would emerge in connection with digital technologies. In a broader sense, [AI]stanbul tackles the question “how can we teach our city to a ‘machine?’” In this individual paper, I will discuss what the “machine” learned and seek the ways what we can learn back from what “machine” learned from city dwellers and the way [AI]stanbul processed collected data as well as the ethical aspect of the process.

Each year schools damaged by natural disasters often leave hundreds of thousands of students with no access to education. In Mozambique, natural disasters coupled with poverty are not merely a temporal transition or a reversible state. Rather, they have detrimental long-term effects and often result in indefinite school shutdowns. In 2008, Sybil Baloyi, a native of South Africa, founded a school named “Hlauleka” in Chokwe, Mozambique.  Her goal was to serve small children orphaned or made vulnerable by war, famine, or natural disasters by providing them with permanent shelter and education. In 2019 the Hlauleka school was hit by cyclone Ida causing flood damage to the school buildings. The Super Resilient design research was developed in response to demands of school buildings in regions susceptible to natural disasters. The project provides resilient, affordable, and environmentally sustainable solutions for a new master plan and flood mitigation strategies for Hlauleka.

The research provided an opportunity for Students from the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) east Tennessee chapter, to contribute to the development of the project. It also created new research opportunities for underrepresented and minority students, giving them a sense of identity as they take part in a project with a pressing concern. These preliminary results established the foundation for a graduate advanced research design studio. During the pandemic, the students worked closely with an international team to develop a new master plan for the school. Applying community feedback from the locals in Chokwe paired with innovative research, they were able to implement feasible flood mitigation strategies in the buildings prototypes. This project can be considered as the first step toward a novel, fully integrated approach to construction driven by the material economy of flood-resistant school buildings in regions susceptible to natural disasters.

In both practice and academic pedagogy, the initial pro forma analysis of site performed in order to lay the groundwork for design has left the profession with an incredibly shallow and even inimical understanding of place. Physical geographies alongside the extension of human construct (buildings, street grids, nodes, axes, etc.) have become the framework for the reading of identity within place; identity, however, is driven by an array of agents traditional cartography often neglects. These agents are especially evidenced in geopolitically fragile environments within the arctic where an intimacy with place is rooted in diurnal and seasonal patterns and migrations, fleeting phenomena stemming from climatic arcs, ecological frameworks and sequencing, and histories and cultures tied directly to spatial landscapes. Without factoring these agents into analysis, these very places are left to be perceived against a fictional background that promotes singular architectural strategies and policy decisions devoid of equitable impacts. A reformed mapping methodology is necessary to shift the trajectory away from traditional site analysis so that in the temporary suspension of physical geographies, ephemeral geographies – the collection of agents, systems, ecologies, economies, and histories that are perpetually in flux – become the primary lens by which place is viewed and understood. To map the identity of a place is to reimagine geography, to investigate ephemeral operations, relationships and synchronicities, to juxtapose the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual,[1] and to liberate phenomena from the encasements of convention.[2] Indigenous human ecologies are incredibly dependent upon and defined by this identity where the effects of climate change and petrochemical development are altering ephemeral geographies, further emphasizing the importance of mapping identity. This methodology then becomes a graphic storytelling platform for place that advocates for informed, equitable and impactful built environment, regional planning and policy decisions. The project employs this mapping methodology by investigating identity in the Alaskan Arctic, resulting in a chronicled atlas of maps, spatial data, and imaginative projection. Based in field work in the Arctic Circle in 2019 and Alaska in 2018, the project moves beyond the design disciplines to more actively engage cultural geography, ecology, and philosophy as frameworks by utilizing geospatial data, spatiotemporal thinking, human subjectivity and creative agency informed by science. Novel approaches to mapping were researched through project and literature reviews, data collection, and engagement with Arctic NGOs, governmental agencies, and arctic researchers and photographers. While identity in the Alaskan Arctic has been predicated on an intimate history of systems for generations, new pressures of additional petrochemical development, climatic instability, coastal erosion, water scarcity, and food insecurity further threaten the way of life for indigenous people groups. The vulnerability of these communities places them at a disadvantage for having a real voice; therefore, this mapping methodology turned storytelling platform challenges the academy and the profession to shift the analysis of place toward one that prioritizes ephemeral geographies in service of stimulating actionable response and a platform for community self-advocacy.

Typical definitions of the term “wild” are often negative in structure: wild animals are undomesticated or untamed, plants are uncultivated, spaces and landscapes are uninhabited, and people are ungoverned. Embedded in the very structure of language, the wild or the “natural” order of the world is set in opposition to human habitation. Nature is wild, while human nature is cultured, civilized, ordered, controlled. This binary view of human versus nature is overly reductive and destructive because it positions humans outside of, and detached from, nature [1]. This detachment allows humans to argue that the appropriation, extraction, and exploitation of natural resources and people is reasonable and inevitable, justifying actions that lead to ecosystem collapse and environmental injustice [2].  Reprogramming this binary is a critical step towards a future where human interaction with the environment moves towards what Timothy Morton terms “symbiotic real” [3]. Culturally, however, this human/nature counterposition also structures potentially useful conditions for becoming wild. Humans become wild when they reject cultural norms, participate in acts of revelry and pleasure, pursue states of bewilderment and awe, of idleness and idyll, of transience and vagrancy, of resistance and rebelliousness. At times these alternative ways of life can open society up to new modes of interaction with material, ecology, and culture, or create blockages in the normal operations of culture and capital. Such dispositions can serve to usher in more sustainable and hybrid forms of existence or cause reactionary acceleration of exploitation of nature.  Architecture and urbanism serve as a powerful frame to mediate our relationship to this artificially constructed idea of “nature.” Operating at the psychological and material thresholds that structure these social and ecological relationships, architecture creates boundaries or encourages interaction between interior worlds and exterior habitats while helping to determine our domestic, familial, and collective proclivities. Architectural material systems, technologies, and spatial praxis can also alienate and isolate us from the physical space of “nature” and the psychological state of being wild: not only keeping us apart, but domesticating and cleansing the landscape of any indication of wildness. Complex socio-technical practices have succeeded in isolating the architectural interior from exterior: rejecting the incursion of other organisms and ideologies into the human domain [4]. So, how wild are we willing to become? As a reaction to this dominant state of being, WILD LIFE is a provocation to experiment with new modes of living in and observing a rewilding world. The design studio questioned the theory and practice of how we, as humans, structure our relationship to “nature,” property, material, and ecosystems. Students worked in groups to propose residency and research spaces for the ecological humanities: an institutional prototype for new interfaces with environments, systems, and wild spaces. How do we situate ourselves—as designers, as people—within these ecological and material processes? How do we foster new sensibilities, symbioses, and ethics of care for each other and the environment? Collectively, the studio reflected on possibilities for hybrid alliances between organisms, structures, and ecosystems towards a more wild life.

The Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment described pressing issues facing cities and people related to climate change, threatening human health, ecological systems, infrastructure, agriculture, and increased storm events (Hayhoe, 2018). However, the report concludes by stating that while many impacts of climate change are unavoidable, much is still largely determined by our collective actions. Design for Change: Digital Tools and Games for a Sustainable Future is an transdisciplinary collaborative research project between a Professor of Architecture and Professor of Art Education & Community Arts Practices. It seeks to reframe problems related to environmental health as an opportunity for design innovation and community engagement, with the goal of building knowledge, generating collective optimism, and developing actionable solutions. Given the urgency of action needed to tackle issues of socio-ecological sustainability, Dr. Madeleine Sclater argues that new, creative, collaborative approaches to educational practices and methods, mediated by technology, are necessary to deeply engage people and develop their consciousness of sustainability issues (Sclater, 2018). This project draws inspiration from the playful work of designers in the 1950’s and 60’s exhibited in “Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America” co-organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Denver Art Museum, as well as, games of the built environment that have shaped the minds of both designers and non-designers alike, such as Froebel’s blocks, SimCity, and Settlers of Catan (Obniski, 2018). The research question asks how can a pedagogy that uses design and playing of games help students better understand urban complexities and propose solutions related to the effects of climate change on the built environment? The collaborative research directly addresses the need for new approaches to educational practices and methods through the development of digital tools and game design based interactive learning, that will engage a broad public for purposes of education and creative communication. This project involves the design of climate change games by students of various education levels to explore what they learned from the process of design, development, and play. It includes game design working with a group of middle school students collaborating with a professional video game company to create a game related to socio-ecological sustainability within their communities, in addition to the design and fabrication of sea level rise board games by students in an interdisciplinary university program. In both projects, students came away from the experience feeling more empowered to transform problems into designs for collective action. The conclusion reflects on lessons learned for applying game design in architectural pedagogy, strategies for successful implementation, and potential for further development.

Architecture is mostly seen as a privilege for the wealthy. For refugees, migrants, and displaced populations, architecture becomes seemingly unachievable and the spaces where people live are subjected to the randomness of necessity. This spatial randomness increases childhood risk factors related to health, sanitation, violence, education, and abuse. With the aim of using architecture as social infrastructure, COLAB Manifesto has developed a flexible model, The New Tent, addressing the need for designed, culturally appropriate, and dignified shelter for displaced and marginalized populations. Our spatial reconfiguration tackles child protection at the forefront by redefining the spaces in which children play and live, as well as providing market opportunities for families to thrive. The New Tent project uses design to address child protection, doubling down as a conflict mitigation strategy and emergency humanitarian response. At the core of the solution, we aim to provide more than just scattered units, but rather invest in the multiplicity that different spatial orientations for housing can offer. Instead of having individual units make up a camp, we have developed a method to connect units to increase community and child protection, designing a courtyard to address the needs of the people living in the New Tents. Architecturally, the courtyard redefines the hierarchy of spaces within the housing units to address the social needs of the occupants. The program focuses on the collective rather than the individual, reinventing the scale of the refugee camp by creating spaces for individuals, families, and communities to thrive simultaneously. By designating areas for private or collective space, families can explore mixed-use programming in their New Tent community. Furthermore, the project tackles on space, taking into account budget and local building capacities. The pilot model took place as an emergency response to the refugee humanitarian crisis in Reynosa, Mexico. Our goal with the project is to amplify its range and address similar communities around Latin America, doubling down as a conflict mitigation strategy and emergency humanitarian response through the dissemination of architecture. Through a participatory design process, COLAB Manifesto studied the effects of CVA (Cash and Voucher Assistance) for Protection funneled through temporary housing that can later convert into market spaces. Piloting this program in Reynosa was extremely critical. Currently, according to the Border Report, the city hosts nearly 5000 refugees from central America experiencing trauma and distress, and requiring humanitarian assistance, especially shelter. The New Tent project studies how communities respond to community-driven shelter design post-construction, collecting data on whether this innovative, community shelter strategy effectively works as a conflict mitigation strategy.

In general, research on informal housing has focused on practices in the Global South but there is evidence of growing housing informality in the United States. Definitions of what constitutes informal housing are varied and they depend on the context at both the local and global scales. Recent literature highlights the ubiquity of informality and its multiple variations and nuances.[i] Some of the characteristics of informal housing in the U.S include informal subdivision of land, housing non-compliant of building codes, and hybridized forms of formal-informal land tenure.[ii] Although, the study of informal housing in the U.S has focused on the Southern border Informal Homestead Subdivisions (IFHS) or Colonias [iii] and the West Coast including Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs), garage conversions, back-house units, and backyard units [iv], there are different informal housing practices across the country that have not been studied. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring case studies of informal housing in the Mississippi Delta and challenging broadly used assumptions that informal housing practices are exclusive issues of: 1) the Global South; and 2) metropolitan areas.  Although the population is shrinking in the Mississippi Delta, there is a shortage of adequate affordable housing for low-income population and low-income residents face financial burden from housing cost. As a result of socio-economic inequalities, barriers to access to affordable housing, and lack of reinforcement of building code and zoning regulations, informal housing practices using manufactured mobile homes, accessory dwelling units in the form of “sheds” spaces, and incremental self-help housing depict affordable housing solutions in the Mississippi Delta. Using participant observation and architectural documentation, this study of informal dwellings structures in the Mississippi Delta unveils the complexities and multidimensional aspects of housing informality present in many American cities and rural towns. Additionally, it explores how informal structures are utilized to accommodate dwelling spaces and small business enterprises. This paper advocates for a progressive understanding of informal housing practices and encourages state and local governments, housing agencies and organizations, and developers to acknowledge the existence of these practices. This recognition could enable policies to adapt and incorporate existing informality to improve the safety, health and wellness of communities in distress and to empower residents. Finally, drawing on international experiences of architectural interventions on informal housing contexts such as neighborhood upgrading, incremental housing, and subsidized self-building housing, this paper aims to contributes to the current global debate on informal housing.

What are the politics of the American domestic interior? How might designers contribute to more equitable futures through interior residential design? Examining issues of race, gender, culture, health, economics, and climate in the domestic realm — drawing from multidisciplinary sources including from design theory, oral history, and public health research — this paper emerges from a course that was the first in the department to count for credit in the institution’s social justice minor. The research brings in expanded voices to examine how the design of domestic spaces communicates cultural, social, and economic values in the United States. Incorporating into design education the perspectives of housing advocates and residents reveals the political and personal impacts of domestic architecture, particularly where design intersects with culture and the law. In New York, for instance, a survey of 446 homes registered as single-family in two Queens neighborhoods with high immigrant populations showed that 80% had signs of basement use, which is typically illegal and often unsafe. An advocacy group estimated that 35% of those could be legalized through design interventions to make them safer. “We have advocates, we have legal experts but we don’t have enough of the design community involved in the process” (Agnani, 2010). Against the contemporary fetishization of tiny homes and micro-units, oral history- and place-based research with residents of New York’s Chinatown shows different lived experiences in small residences. “We had very little space. We had a large bedroom, a small common room, a narrow kitchen, and a bathroom that was almost part of the kitchen” (Chou, 2011). Historical resources show the centrality of housing and interior housing design in larger social movements. As W.E.B. DuBois wrote in “The Problem of Housing the Negro,” “Of itself, truly, the question of physical homes for nine million of our fellows is of no little moment, but it is of greatest interest when we know how closely it is connected with other and pressing questions of health, education and morals,” focusing on racial justice issues associated with the interior (DuBois, 1901). Forty years later “houser” Elisabeth Coit demonstrated the importance of careful resident engagement, using extensive low-income tenant interviews to develop design guidelines accommodating their real need, rather their imagined ones. Where some housing “experts” were frustrated — “they use their kitchen for things they ought to use their living room for” — Coit considered supporting tenants’ domestic activities to be her design assignment, creating resident-centered schematics that are still provocative today (Coit, 1942). Adding to these examples, the paper will examine feminist, climate justice, and other diverse perspectives on the spaces where we spend most of our lives and where politics play out every day. Armed with research into the political dimensions of our most intimate environments, design students emerge better prepared to contribute to social equity through domestic interior work, perhaps what they are most likely to encounter early in their career.

Technological advancements throughout the industrial era have created more efficient, more economical, and safer machines to aid – and often replace – human operations. Each industrial advancement radically changes social, political, economical, environmental, and even linguistic conditions. Each technological turn has transformed communication between physical and intellectual entities shared by humans. Recent advancements in technological language have made artificially intelligent machines, specifically Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPT), a potential active participant in a creative discourse. What does it mean to transfer creative responsibility to artificial intelligence? Is GPT the death of the author or the invention of a new author? Our particular interest in GPT, and the core of this project, explores language in machine learning and the role of the author within the creative endeavor of architectural discourse. GPTs are artificially intelligent text generating machines that possess the capacity to influence language patterns, create new hybrid languages, and as a result influence human creativity and hermeneutics. OpenAI GPT-2 is pre-trained from internet sites curated by humans, such as Reddit. However, we additionally “fine -tuned” a model with select excerpts from notable manuscripts to focus the discourse on architecture. The implicit bias and potentially dangerous nature of the base model was closely scrutinized against the unpredictable and exciting nature of the generated output. The theoretical treatise, De Architectura by Vitruvius, stated that architecture requires the “interaction of practice and reason…a larger body of knowledge inevitably linked to the social, political, economic, and environmental context of its making.” Our project updates the architectural treatise by operating as a collaboration between human and machine, similar to literary works such as Pharmako-AI and 1 the Road which employ GPT models to generate contemplative and reflexive texts. The examples included demonstrate how the tool surpasses mere utility and enters into an act of creativity, engaging in an intersubjective discourse between human, technology, and language. Creativity is no longer an act of anthropocentric genius originating in the privacy of the human brain. Natural language models rely on a collective language, yet blur the line between subject and object, the one and the many, consciousness and unconsciousness. The role of author shuffles with that of editor. How will the role of architect, creative genius, also change? Questioning Benjaminian author and aura, our artificial intelligent treatise explores the space between the language of architectural discourse in the age of machine learning and the sanctity of the cannon. Using artificially intelligent software, we have produced an “architectural treatise” trained on theoretical discourse from Alberti to Zumthor. The machine, in a freestyle associative discourse with the authors, hallucinates on the syntax of these iconic thinkers in an unprecedented stream of pseudo-consciousness where the possibilities of a future inter-subjective author/architect is contemplated.

It is argued that the practice of community design not only requires individual participation in the profession, but also requires active civic engagement. Samuel Mockbee once stressed the importance of a deeper democratic purpose of inclusion in energizing one’s community. Many methods for public participation have been introduced in urban design and its allied fields such as architecture and landscape design. This type of community-based practice has its root in the field of participatory planning and design, which is a response to the demand to have voices heard and ideas taken from those who are involved in the process. It sees community members as citizen designers who play an active role in shaping the formulation of both the design process and its ultimate results. One of many issues facing this type of participatory approach has to do with the challenge of making the process comprehensible, relevant, and interesting to the potential participants in order for them to willingly participate in the process. Extended Reality (XR) apps on personal mobile devices, such as smart phones or tablets, may offer some solutions. Immersive visualization technologies, such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, are powerful tools to facilitate participatory processes in community design. As a visualization apparatus, XR goes beyond the dichotomy of passive methods of engagement and their one-way communication with the public. XR offers an interactive method to expand both non-computerized and computerized visualization techniques in community design. Moreover, XR promotes civic engagement by providing comprehensible information to citizens and assisting them to express their preferences in an intuitive way. This paper discusses the “Transforming City of Charlotte with Immersive Visual Data” project, funded by Knight Foundation’s Smart Cities initiative to foster public participation through XR. An XR platform is being developed to assist in two critical planning and design activities: 1) using 3D visual data and immersive visual effects to reveal and communicate planning intentions and development goals, 2) engaging community members in meaningful decision-making roles. The proposed platform, which can be used in desktop computers, handheld devices, and head-mounted displays, will leverage XR technologies, geospatial data analytics, and scenario-based methods to create a new user interface to support these two critical community outreach activities for the on-going Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan. Community members who are concerned with the future of Charlotte will soon be able to use the XR platform to learn about how the resulting Comprehensive Plan may (re)shape the physical fabric of their communities, see the future urban form via this immersive experience offered by the platform, and in turn share their ideas with the planning staff in the City.   It is anticipated that the eventual adoption of the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan by the City Council in late 2021 will only signal a new beginning of yet another round of community outreach efforts. This XR platform will continue to function in the next round of planning activities as a tool to assist in visualizing, collecting, and analyzing data at the neighborhood scale.

Accompanying with Chinese urbanization enters its latter part, the rising call of quality-oriented development requires further exploration on the integrated development of two sides of urban waterside in many cities(Gospodini, 2001). Nevertheless, most existed studies either focus on the overall evaluation of urban transportation, industrial development, and urban ecology from the macro perspectives or discuss specific spatial and economic problems in waterside areas(Li, 1993; Zhang, Feng and Peng, 2002; Shu, 2014). There is a clear gap for measuring the integrated development degree of the urban waterside. This intangible issue was difficult to measure due to data availability and limited analytical techniques. Nevertheless, new research potentials are raising with the emerging of multi-sourced urban data and geodesign techniques(Batty, 2013; Townsend, 2015). A comprehensive index reflecting the integrated development degree of urban waterside can now be built up from both morphological, social and economic perspectives. Four representative waterfront cities in China, i.e., Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Ningbo, have been applied as cases(Fig1). Specifically, the impact area of the waterside was initially computed as the foundation for further analyses. With the help of AutoNavi Map API and Python script, the impact area of the waterside was identified as the areas that can be reached by public transit within 15 and 30 minutes from each city’s waterfront(Fig2). After that, a set of morphological issues had been involved with the help of geodesign analytical techniques, including the morphological feature of the impact area, development intensity (FAR, GSI), and street network density and street configuration(Ye and Van Nes, 2014) (Fig3). Meanwhile, socioeconomic indicators include the number of Points-of-Interest(Cervero, 1989) (Fig4), activity density based on Location-based Service data(Fig5), etc., which were involved together. At last, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was employed to calculate impacts of the above indicators and then a quantitative index was proposed based on multi-sourced urban data and geodesign. It is interesting to find that urban history and development policy play key roles in this index, while urban capacity might not have a high performance. Shanghai obtaining the highest urban capacity but its integrated development degree is ranked as third, after Ningbo and Guangzhou. This insight matches with common knowledge collected via expert interviews among local urbanists. In short, this research not only contributes a more comprehensive approach of quantitatively measuring an intangible issue affecting the quality of life but also develops a data-informed analytical approach addressing complex urban issues efficiently. Considering the availability of indicators applied in our study, this index can be easily extended into a series of cities and provide a big picture supporting the generation of new insights. In-depth understandings between urban policy and integrated development across the river also help to support precise urban planning and urban design practices along the waterside area.