ACSA 102 Call for Papers

• Local Modernisms

  
  Lisa Findley, California College of the Arts 

  This paper session invites explorations of contemporary architectural strategies, tactics and practices in the “New Third World” that leverage locally available materials, technologies, labor, and cultural sensibilities to create a specific yet contemporary, sometimes even radical, architecture. 

  In his erudite 1995 book “The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture: The Incomplete Project”, Colin St. John Wilson describes the project of Modernism in architecture as cleaving architecture in two: into “architecture” as a fine art and “building” as a functional and technological activity. The purpose of the book is to open a conversation about the reintegration of these two pieces of a whole. While St. John Wilson is focused on European modernism and the post-war inklings of a return to holistic notions of architecture in the work of architects like Aalto, the world was littered with other examples at the time: the experiments of Lina Bo Bardi in Brazil, the tentative explorations away from the canon by Pancho Geddes in Mozambique, the finely tuned projects of B.V. Doshi in India and the startling emergence of Luis Barragan in Mexico. 

  In fact, the most robust examples of the work St. John Wilson admires was actually in non-European settings just emerging from under the hand of colonizers. Like Aalto’s postwar Finland, these countries were resource poor and if architects wanted to build well, they had to rely on local materials and craft. Unlike Finland, however, in these cases the modified modernism took on a complicated political slant as well. Modernism in these contexts was a break with the colonial past, a badge of sophistication and an indication of an intention to be part of the international community through the adoption—and adaptation- -of the International Style. 

  In the 1970s and 1980s, a time of global economic expansion and corresponding rapid internationalization and globalization of architectural practice, these kinds of locally embedded modernist practices withered away. However, as the successes of the post war global system of reached a point of diminishing returns, as the first wave of post-colonial governments fail to maintain the fragile constructed unities of colonization, as cultures re-fragment, there is resurgence of engagement with this kind of local modernism. 

  Like the post-war contexts of early explorations of this strategy, developing countries around the world face resource restrictions, have dire need for maintenance and development of local building technologies and labor pools, and have talented architects who are saavy about global trends and the benefits of contemporary design practices. On top of the challenges Aalto faced, these architects face myriad environmental challenges ranging from the sourcing of materials to the energy consumption of their buildings. They are also often working in post-colonial settings where questions of visual, cultural and political identity are meanings they must fold into their practices, processes and buildings. 

  Submissions to this session should go beyond a survey of an architect or practice to contextualize these in terms of St. John Wilsons’s thesis, the issues it implies, the conference theme and the larger arc of contemporary practice. 

• The New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space

  
  June Williamson, City College of New York 
  Nandini Bagchee, City College of New York 

  This session invites theoretical essays, case studies, and design research that interrogate the current state of urban design discourse around questions of: design and democracy (radical or otherwise), the politics of public versus private space and place-making, and definitions of authenticity in the urban realm. We seek to probe the ebbs and flows of considerations of place and the public realm, urbanization, resilience, and social equity over the past few decades and to collectively articulate a robust new critique in defense of public space and rights to the city (and suburb). One phenomenon in particular that we would like to probe is the proliferation of urban design and architectural projects at the large scale—in new urban districts or new “cities” designed by global firms with local backing—that privilege totalizing or bounded urban forms, perhaps entirely privatized or gated, for the sake of facilitating the measurement of metrics in closed loops (zero net energy, neutral carbon emissions, recycled waste streams and other seemingly worthy and environmentally pressing goals derived from the ascendant rubric of sustainable urbanism). What, exactly, do we trade off—ethically, politically, socially, and otherwise—in this trend? What are the alternatives? 

  In the twenty-plus years since the publication of Michael Sorkin’s influential “Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space,” much has changed: the emergence of ubiquitous online social networks, rapid urbanization throughout Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, Africa and Latin America (however measured—see Neil Brenner’s critique of ideologies of the “urban age”), and accelerating efforts to reconfigure districts within global cities—within historic fabric, in post-industrial zones, and in aging suburban landscapes. “Variations on a Theme Park” articulated ways in which postmodern design for downtown and suburban districts in North America created a condition that, in Sorkin’s words, “eradicates genuine particularity in favor of a continuous urban field, a conceptual grid of boundless reach,” characterized by the loosening of ties to local place, pervasive regimes of surveillance and control, and the conceptualization of cities as simulations, replete with ersatz historical references. What are the legacies of this critical discourse? As we “go global,” to consider forms of urbanization in cultures where the concept of public space exists in very different guises, and as we continue to explore the possibilities, limits and risks of the reconfiguration of political and social institutions, how can and should this discourse evolve? 

• A CHANGING GLOBAL CONTEXT FOR ARCHITECTURE: Emerging Technologies, Disciplines and Design Responses to Challenges Facing Coastal Regions

  
  Jeff Carney, Louisiana State University 
  Thomas Colbert, University of Houston 

  The rapid growth of global population and continuing urbanization of the Earth’s landscape are pressing commerce, industry, people, and fragile ecosystems together in unprecedented ways. Adding to the squeeze, rising sea levels, increasing instability of weather, and technological change are forcing fundamental changes in traditional lifestyles, historic settlement patterns, and modern development practices. Efforts to cope with these changes are transforming the role of architecture and its relationship to disciplines that have until recently seemed quite remote from the field. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the world’s coastal regions. In these locations the confluence of inexpensive wetlands and agricultural lands, rapid urbanization, and explosive industrial development are attracting millions of people to low lying areas even as coastal lands are subsiding and sea levels are rising. Shocks to the networked flows of population, technology, and water in the world’s coastal regions have led to disastrous disruptions with catastrophic consequences that could become much more serious and more widespread in coming years. 

  In the course of the dramatic reorganization of the means and methods of analysis, design, and construction that are now shaping the built environment, the architectural profession has much to gain or lose. The profession faces a growing identity crisis as both urban centers and rural communities are increasingly threatened, undermining the very foundation of contemporary practice centered on constructing for the human environment. However, this very real threat is matched by an optimistic re-centering of design thinking in the realms of engineering, environmental and biological sciences, and planning. What could emerge is a truly multi-disciplinary model of design practice with the architect as a central player. 

  Papers in this session should examine the re-centering of the discipline and practice of architecture in the face of these challenges. How are increasingly multi-disciplinary engineering, scientific research, and design groups exploring the potential of design methods? What new methods and tools are emerging from these collaborations? How are these changes transforming the architect’s ability to act? What exemplary research and design projects are emerging to solve specific problems? Does a re-engagement with science deepen architectural agency or threaten the autonomy that design speculation requires? We invite papers to address these subjects from specific local and regional conditions while considering their effects at the global scale. 

  Critical Areas for Consideration: 

  • What are the emerging tools and technologies of analysis and design? 
  • What professional roles do designers have in the emerging multi-disciplinary teams that that are coming together to address the challenges that are facing changing coastal regions? 
  • What planning and design responses are being developed? 
  • What are the implications of all this for practice and teaching? 
• USxSAm--Examining the Trans-American Metropolis

  
  Armando Montilla, Clemson University 
  José L.S. Gámez, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

  “The city is the last refuge of solidarity. I’m not expecting much from central governments. This is going to be the century of the city.” Jamie Lerner, Architect/ Planner (Brazil, 2005) 

  In June of 2001, Time Magazine described Miami as the “capital of Latin America” and “a laboratory for the U.S. -- if not the Americas -- of a new kind of city in terms of international business and ethnicity.” Miami-Dade had - by then - become the largest metropolitan area in the US with a Hispanic majority. The country as a whole is following this trend: by 2003, Latinos [have] surpassed African Americans as the largest minority population in the United States, and over the years 2000 to 2010, Latino population growth accounted for approximately half of the country’s overall growth. 

  This year’s host venue, Miami, is a city that epitomizes not only current patterns of growth and ethnicity in the US urban population, but also a city that provides the evidence of what the Trans-American Metropolis is: A city of propinquity, where ethnicity and cultural production inform urban patterns, socio-spatial practices, territorial empathy and urban idiosyncrasy. This can be seen in well-known areas such as Calle Ocho but also in areas less known beyond Miami’s metropolitan spheres of influence such as Doral (or ‘Doralzuela’: most Venezuelan city in the country), or Aventura (most Brazilian/ Argentinian-Jewish city in the US). Areas such as these are part of the Miamian urban kaleidoscope and contribute to the city’s demographic propinquity, to its emergence as an “Ethnocity” –a city representative of the diverse populations found within a new and vibrant Trans- American urbanity. 

  As a major Latin American hub, Miami increasingly holds keys to our collective futures. If Miami is the destination, might it also be a prototype? This session will explore the changing landscapes of US cities as they become more representative of trends found in the Global South. Authors are invited to submit papers that explore recent urban demographic/ethnic and socio-spatial (trans)formations in Miami and elsewhere. Of particular interest are papers that illustrate how normative ideas of “American” urbanism are challenged or that point to new opportunities such formations open for educational and design practice. By exploring innovative urban strategies, informal tactics of encroachment, and emergent architectures and urbanisms, we seek the future of a Trans-American city. 

• Reflective Practices in a Global Age; or, Is Boyer Still Meaningful?

  
  José L.S. Gámez, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 
  Phoebe Crisman, University of Virginia 

  The 1996 Boyer Report remains a seminal and often referenced buttress to design education. The report emphasized that the design studio should be the forum for the integration of the curriculum at large, the venue for critical reflection, and the site of intellectual partnerships between faculty and students. 

  However, as the noted architectural educator Dana Cuff (1992) has illustrated, studio exercises are often “composed for didactic reasons, so complex problems are simplified, variables are isolated for study, and a series of educational experiences are coordinated.” The academic setting, thus, often removes problems from contextual constraints in order to clarify and focus upon specific issues within a coordinated set of increasingly complex learning experiences. One unintended result is a dual paradox: 1) intellectual distancing enables a form of reflectivity limited typically to an individual student’s problem solving skills; and 2) the problem solving skills of students remain too limited to be applicable in environments increasingly characterized by diverse and often competing constituencies. This combination of factors limits the capacity of design education to address increasingly complex global contexts. 

  The learning environments explored by Boyer and others, such as Schon and Cuff, require a reflective practice that is more than simply the practice of professional skills or the practice of an individual’s skills in isolation. In light of the conference’s theme, this session will explore an array of factors that now impact a global framework for design education. Can architectural education provide a venue for globally and civically engaged learning that fosters a “pragmatic value” (Sletto 2010) that designers must develop if they are to be effective cross and inter-cultural practitioners? Is studio–based education, as it is currently often constituted, capable of addressing a more demanding set of cultural, economic, technical, social, spatial, or political contexts that now face a global profession? What new spheres of global, trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural design practices should we address? These questions, and others, will help us frame new pedagogies of global design education and to better understand the roles that reflective practices may have in the 21st century.

• Emerging Workflows, Techniques, and Design Protocols for Carbon-Neutral Buildings

  
  Thomas Spiegelhalter, Florida International University

  Worldwide, the level of man-made Greenhouse Gas emissions reached a record low - approximately 31 billion tons in 2012. Members of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim that this was almost certainly the largest jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.

  For the building sector, the mandatory European Union’s nearly Net-Zero-Energy-Building 2018-2020 regulations for all new public and private owned buildings and the voluntary U.S. American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) 2030 carbon neutral building challenge’ mark a change toward various educational resource tools that address minimizing carbon emissions.  All these initiatives try to reverse the negative impact of Greenhouse Gases.

  But is this possible? How can Carbon-Neutral-Buildings become a curricular standard and a practical routine in education and the profession worldwide? To date, the basic curricular design process with integrated project delivery metrics for a robust 3D/4D-carbon-neutral-design regulatory framework are either incomplete or missing in most accredited architectural schools! 

  Another challenge for the profession is the divide between design and construction. This has resulted in increased cost and schedule delays because information technology, optimization, and digital production techniques are not well integrated. On one hand, a large number of well-known Architectural and Engineering firms are transforming their practices by using Parametric, BIM, and scripting tools. These tools help them automate parts of their carbon-neutral driven design and analytical work from Design to Fabrication. On the other hand, large Engineer/Contractors have begun to transform their construction practices by moving gradually into pre-fabrication, modularization, manufacturing, assembly, and carbon neutrality contracting for yearly benchmarking.

  This session looks for papers that are working to digitally transform the design process toward 3D-carbon-neutral design coding with integrated life-cycle scenarios, intelligent project delivery, and synchronous digital manufacturing processes. The papers should also address questions for policy makers, educators and the building industry. Intelligent long-term solutions are required to reduce the negative impact of design, on the environment and wasting scarce resources. 

  Consequently, this panel invites presentations to explore parallels between computational and performance based architectural design and manufacturing practices– presented through research or design/built case studies and experiments in ‘Carbon-Neutral Design Coding’, ‘Integrated Project Delivery', and ‘Digital Manufacturing’. The session will examine how the future of computationally developed carbon neutral architecture with integrated process technology will affect the design and industrial practice through parametric-topological and/or algorithmic modeling.

  One conclusion may elaborate on how these emerging tools may offer completely new industrial design techniques, visions, and workflows in the Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) with Swarm Intelligence (SI) driven sensor infrastructures and digital manufacturing systems for producing, assembling, and benchmarking the next generation of carbon neutral buildings. 

• Design/Build Xchange

  
  Ted Cavanagh, Dalhousie University

  Since the Red Brigade left the Bauhaus to effect social change and technological innovation in the Soviet Union and, in North America, since the carpenter/architect route to licensure in the nineteenth century, architects have taught students by involving them in actual building. This way of teaching has been fraught with difficulties. Also, it has huge implications for any school positioning its attitude to pedagogy across abroad range of issues such as the social, the technological, the professional, the global and the local.

  With the introduction of an award in 2012, the ACSA underlined the recent increase in Design/Build courses in Schools of Architecture in North America. In the February 2012 ACSANews, a survey by Gjertson shows courses in 70% of curriculae, but there is no easy fit. Design/build can be as big as the entire curriculum or as small as an elective; it can be built in the School’s courtyard or half-way across the world; it can be demolished at the end of the semester or become a permanent part of a community; and it can innovate in many different ways.

  This session is interested in projects that expand the potentials of design/build in our schools as well as those that concentrate on improving delivery and efficacy. It is interested in first-hand reports comparing pedagogical contexts as well as rigorous surveys ranging across many schools. It is interested in the single project and wider initiatives. Above all, it interested in papers that critically analyze the conditions of the project before, during, and after construction.

  The session’s chairs represent two types of design/build – courses that focus on local, technical innovation and courses that concentrate on global, social change. While neither excludes the other, this session examines the advantages, and limitations, of this distinction and the emergent phenomena of programs and projects that attempt to address both. Papers in this session should describe their focus on a particular area of advocacy be it social, technical, economic or environmental, and the ways that the authors attempted to adhere to a particular value realizing their projects. In this regard failures are as illuminating as successes

  Papers interested in distinguishing between the two types of design/build might follow Richard Sennett who argued for the technical as an outcome of “the powers of (the) imagination” (Sennett 2008, 10) and its apparent opposition to Michel Foucault’s view that architecture “can and does produce positive effects when the liberating intentions of the architect coincide with the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom.” (Rabinow 1991, 246)

  This session hopes to establish a critical discourse on whether design/build projects enrich the teaching and practice of architecture, and what they presage in term. The aim of this session and current symposia – Berlin 12/12, Mexico City 10/13 and Halifax 10/14 – is to create a critical discourse. What are costs and benefits of possible future scenarios? How can we improve the exchange of experience? And, how can we collaborate across schools in this expanding area of teaching.

• Global Architectural Machine Traditions

  
  Peter Olshavsky, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

  With an evolving global discipline much of today’s discussion has turned to the recovery of modernity. The philosopher Charles Taylor notes that this was a “historically unprecedented amalgam of new practices and institutional forms (science, technology, industrial production, urbanization), of new ways of living (individualism, secularization, instrumental rationality); and of new forms of malaise (alienation, meaninglessness, a sense of impending social dissolution).” With this resuscitation following its terminal diagnosis in post-modernity, the “architectural machine” has once again been foregrounded in education, discourse, and practice. Today it appears in the guise of building performance, DigiFab, Parametricism, and the techno-scientific deliverables of research studios. But are these truly its only future?

  Of course, the machine’s impact on social and architectural imaginaries has been profound in the history of architecture. This can be difficult to delineate because of its historically changing status. Yet, machines are frequently at the core of debates about the shifting relationship between people, architecture, and nature. To consider their impact and possibilities, this session explores not a series of western “machine ages” but machine traditions that acknowledge how societies differ in the ways they modernize. Papers are welcome that study the complex intentions, interpretations, and deployments of architectural machines in global architecture. This session is less interested in the direct products of machines (e.g., gypsum board, information networks or pollution) or the narrow view that architectural machines are merely expressions of available technology or designer’s personal style. Rather paper’s might address certain socio-cultural forms that characterized Euro-American modernism are being re-imagined today in a global context or vice versa. Or, how architecture as a machine shapes the shared norms of place, power, and social responsibility and how that collective sense provides legitimacy for the architect’s understanding and imaginative articulation of the built world even in the “Information Age.” Other topics could include: machine metaphors, representations, and transpositions as well as the theological, ethical, and poetic implications of machine traditions. These can be sought in any number of forms, geographic locations, or thematic manifestations. Most importantly, what are the implications of these richer conceptualizations of machine architecture in a changing disciplinary terrain as architects try to re-imagine what it means to be modern?

• Capital Flight

  
  Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, University At Buffalo, SUNY

  Western countries suffering deeply from the current global financial crisis are experiencing an unprecedented large flight of human capital, also known as brain drain. Due to architecture’s sensitive nature as a canary in the coal mine of global economy, this situation is being particularly felt within its professional and academic realms. For example, the article “The Pain in Spain” published recently (August 2012) by David Cohn in the Architectural Record illustrates this situation quite well—as Spain’s current architectural brain drain consists of a “diaspora of talent estimated at 4,000 of Spain’s 60,000 licensed architects” with “65 percent said that they would “be willing to consider” moving abroad.”

  Although the sporadic moves of practitioners and academics have always been a standard recurrence in architecture, these large scale migrations are not the same neat import/export operations: they are not temporary moves of individual architects or academics interested in completing a job or teaching a course. Due to their nature, these extensive and desperate moves—which involve large amounts of individuals leaving one country or cultural context behind and becoming immersed in another one—have a much deeper and permanent influence, both as small scale personal implications (on the person’s own work) and as large scale disciplinary consequences (in both the academic and professional realms).

  Accepting that the current situation is not unique to Western countries and foreseeing that it might become a recurrent generalized condition due to the fragile, unpredictable, and contagious nature of the global financial system, this panel adopts the current problems as a generic framework and asks for papers that elucidate the implications of the large global moves of architectural academics and practitioners. As mentioned earlier, this panel considers the following two aspects to be of special importance for the understanding of these large scale moves:

  1. Relationships between biographical circumstances and the resulting work of academics and practicing architects: how changing country and culture alters one’s architectural practice, research, or teaching.

  2. Consequences of these migrations within architecture’s global practicing and academic realms: what opportunities are possible with the new excess of talent (for the destination countries) or within the voids that inevitably appear due to the flight of human capital (for the countries being left behind).

  Papers can take a wide arrange of approaches in order to illuminate these global issues. For instance, and just to name a few options, they can present analysis of historical precedents (of individuals, architectural movements, academic institutions, offices), imaginative proposals for new academic structures able to take advantage of these migrations (in the form of academic programs, research centers, institutes), or demonstrations of new opportunistic models of practice (in perpetual move attempting to constantly redefine what local means in each context).

• Game On: The Use of Location Based Technologies In Design Today

  
  Amy Murphy, University of Southern California
  Eric Gordon, Emerson College

  In 1967, Marshall McLuhan proclaimed,
  The Renaissance Legacy.
  The Vanishing Point = Self Effacement,
  The Detached Observer.
  No Involvement! 

  The Viewer of Renaissance art is systematically
  Placed outside the frame of experience. A piazza
  For everything and everything in its piazza.

  The instantaneous world of electric informational
  Media involves all of us, all at once. No detachment
  Or frame is possible. 

  Such once-polemically sounding statements now provide a degree of theoretical legitimacy to today’s location-based computing practices – anything from check-ins on a mobile phone to place-based digital games and simulations. While location functionality in computing is often used to bolster consumer habits  (Foursquare, Facebook’s Places, etc), there are an abundance of examples of it being used to foster local social movements or build local community. Specialized location-based tools are now being developed as central elements in many civic-minded urban design processes — often to inform pre-design programming ideas, to organize community feedback during the design phase and to provide real-time post-occupancy feedback (previously un-attainable to most architects). Other forms of dispersed online interactive technologies are being used in conjunction with in situ community meetings to improve real-time community interactions.

  Broadly inclusive in the breadth of its interests, this session will seek papers exploring the increased impact of location-based technologies, including location-based social networks, place-based online games and simulations, and mobile reporting tools, on the making of contemporary urban architecture..

  • How do online social interactions augment experiences of geographic space?
  • How exactly do these new technologies contribute to expanding the public’s involvement in design today?
  • Can location-based games cultivate deeper understandings and interactions with space through rules, game mechanics, and playful practices?
  • What are the current technologies that can be transformative of contemporary architectural practices?
  • Do these technologies introduce a new relationship between architects, clients and users? If so, what are the qualities of this new relationship?
  • Radically new technologies do not always produce radically new results or even better architecture. Where are the limits between real progress in this area and misguided desire?
  • These technologies often result in big data sets. How do large amounts of data about community habits, needs, and practices, change the responsibility of the architect to be responsive to the community?
  • Are there ever any unrealistic expectations involved with this form of engagement (where unfulfilled rhetorical promises of increased engagement can potentially turn civic hope into public cynicism)?

  The moderators welcome papers that not only look at past and present scenarios, but also those that extend the trajectory of current practices into the future to imagine where we are heading and to speculate if truly new forms of urban planning are emerging.  The session will hopefully also address the role of the academy in producing funded research, published scholarship as well as particular studio experiments to increase our collective knowledge of this new frontier. 

• Realizing the Right to the City: Architectural Methodologies as Agents of Change

  
  Nadia M. Anderson, Iowa State University

  In his 1968 essay “The Right to the City,” Henri Lefebvre states, the architect, the planner, the sociologist, the economist, the philosopher or the politician cannot out of nothingness create new forms and relations. More precisely, the architect is no more a miracle-worker than the sociologist. Neither can create social relations, although under certain favourable conditions they help trends to be formulated (to take shape). Only social life (praxis) in its global capacity possesses such powers – or does not possess them. (Kofman and Lebas 1996, 150-151) 

  Lefebvre’s challenge to architects is how we can act as agents of change in realizing the right to the city for diverse peoples. As our cities shrink, expand, sink, and/or rise under shifts in global economic and climate systems, architects must increasingly choose between what Teddy Cruz describes as “complicity with the increasing neo-liberalist global economic policies of privatization and homogenization” and “simple strategies of transgression and appropriation” (Cruz 2004).  

  Terms like public interest design, social justice art, and tactical urbanism (among others) are increasingly used to describe design practices in which the role of the designer is neither professional decision-maker nor passive advocate but rather a critical partner in processes of small-scale intervention with large-scale implications. While social engagement has been present in architectural discourse and practice since the Industrial Revolution, it has recently received renewed attention in connection with contemporary issues such as natural disasters, increased urbanization, global warming, and economic crises. How is this work situated with respect to architectural education and practice? Is this a temporary fashion or a long-term shift? Do these practices confirm Cruz’s oppositional polarity or can they occupy positions between top-down and bottom-up sources of power?

  This session invites papers that discuss how public interest design expands or reframes the theories and methods of architecture, moving beyond form-making to place form within Lefebvre’s idea of the social production of space. Papers can discuss analysis of the work of others or present exhibitions, practices, or studios that engage the “study of realities” using local social, ecological, economic, and political conditions as agents of change (Kofman and Lebas 1996, 155). In all cases, papers should not only describe the work but also discuss its methodologies as components of the reframing of pedagogy and practice. 

• Chasing the City

  
  Jeffrey Nesbit, Texas Tech University
  Joshua M. Nason, University of Texas at Arlington

  "Instead of isolated parcels of land or singular architectural projects, it's now a matter of considering an entire city infrastructure and its connected environs, whose reach is hundreds of miles beyond what has been conventionally considered urban domain. The city now represents all territory, and all territory needs to be regarded and managed as one urban system." - Bruce Mau from: "Massive Change," 2004

  While rare, progressive ideas regarding cities have changed the discursive landscape of design thinking and criticism over past generations. The visions of designers have developed lasting conceptions of the world’s most compelling cities and their potentials. Francis and Barbara Golffing claimed that, “The idea of Utopia is timeless,” while today’s designers frequently refer to the work of those such as Situationists, the Metabolists, Archigram and individuals such as Fumihiko Maki. This session asks what are the revolutionary ideas shaping how we understand the cities of today and tomorrow. Cities certainly are not simplifying nor homogenizing, but rather growing, complexifying and mutating at unprecedented rates. How do we keep up?

  This session is focused on exploring radical approaches to urbanism through discussing alternative solutions to the conventional standards of urban planning models. Rather than adhering to rudimentary notions of supposed singularities, more inclusive and projective urban strategies should now investigate cities as concurrent topographies. This shift provides for new opportunities in identifying multivalent urban organizational systems as communities of interacting urban-agents. We can no longer afford to underestimate our ecological environments, both natural and synthetic, as archipelagic collections of isolated or even tangentially related pieces gravitating to one another.  More inclusive and encompassing urban alternatives illicit new methods of understanding the interconnectivity and integration of formal, social, infrastructural, cultural, and political forces. These major influences are comprised of systems exchanging and operating as symbiotic productive layers, which are capable of responding to transformative flows and disruptions, much like that of microorganisms. Better acknowledging such integrated systems can generate opportunities for the restructuring of hyper densities and extreme oscillations embedded within a continuously evolving urban transformations. Despite this, many of our current analytical models are unable to adapt to these developing constructs making us guilty of what Reyner Banham referred to as an inability to “find new bottles for new wine.” How do we, as urban detectives, begin to approach such complex evolutions both critically and practically?

  Applicable paper proposals should focus on specific urban ideas of a radical nature.

• Partage, or Strategies for Sharing

  
  Jennifer Bonner, Georgia Institute of Technology
  Christian Stayner, Stayner Architects

  In “The Politics of Aesthetics,” the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere presents a “distribution,” or “partage,” of aesthetics by linking art to politics by the commonalities between the two: both art and politics delineate that which is visible from that which is invisible, tangible and intangible, audible and inaudible, among a number of seeming dichotomies. To this mix we add the delineation of the local and the global as issues central to the confluence of aesthetics and politics within architectural practice and pedagogy.

  The term “partage,” or distribution, has two conflicting -- if not nearly opposite -- meanings: the first is that of division and splitting, of divvying up and apportioning. The second definition is that of sharing and of holding in common. The practice of partage is central to the history of globalization: the term describes a practice by which objects excavated in an archaeological dig were divided between the sponsoring country (e.g., a national museum), the archaeologist’s home institution, and the host country -- simultaneously a practice of cultural preservation as well as state-sanctioned looting.

  In an era where super-blocks, mega-projects, and outsized ambitions are questions, the strategy of partage -- at once distributed as well as networked, communal and individual, local and global, formless and systematic -- holds great promise for architectural and urban practice that does not shrink from revisioning practice, engaging the city, and reevaluating the social performance of the profession within society.

  This panel addresses strategies and practices for building at small scale while enacting outcomes at a large scale. Proposals should address ways in which formal, programmatic, or spatial patterning, aggregation, dividing, and resource sharing has the possibility for creating scalar outcomes with specific architectural and urban form. Among the questions this panel will consider are: How does architecture create coherence through strategies of accumulation within the city? How have architects formally dealt with strategies of partage (from Unger’s Berlin to Pier Vittorio Aureli’s archipelago)? How do we understand small scale interventions into the city as parts of grand transformations? How can architectural practice simultaneously divide and share political and aesthetic responsibilities for the city?

• Disrupting the 'Space of Flows'

  
  Marie-Alice L Heureux, University of Kansas
  Sonia Hirt, Virginia Tech

  Since 1989, when Manuel Castells introduced the term 'space of flows,' the concept of an unbounded world, where everyone is connected and where constructed boundaries are transcended in every way has become ubiquitous. In an unbounded world, members of the new class of internationals no longer expect anyone to be tied to a place; but to be available from anywhere, anytime. Many Londoners are more connected to New Yorkers and Singaporeans than to anyone living in the adjacent boroughs of Hackney or Tower Hamlets. The Office for Metropolitan Architecture's (OMA 1998) proposal to relocate Amsterdam's spatially constrained Schiphol airport to a man-made island replete with airport amenities, international retail outlets, and upscale housing for unbound travelers, epitomizes this type of global, geographically disconnected, yet ultimately bounded space.

  Scholars of contemporary architecture and urbanism have argued that, despite the emergence of a 'space of flows,' despite the rise of global cities; the fine-grained morphology of urban districts, neighborhoods, and metropolitan areas shows a growing number of divisions. Cities and rural areas have not become 'border-less' according to Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kampen (Globalizing Cities 2000). Rather, in the 'new spatial order,' the 'boundaries between divisions as reflected in social and physical walls' and differentiated classes are increasing and hardening. Postmodern urbanism is exemplified by cities like Los Angeles, Vancouver, and even Kansas City, Missouri; with their un-centered centers and loosely connected nodes. In Variations on a Theme Park (1992) Michael Sorkin warns that spaces of global capitalism have threatened to destroy classic place-based, public-and-democratic urbanism. Yet, Marshall McLuhan (as the conference organizers highlight) argues that global interconnectedness has 'heightened human awareness of responsibility' (Understanding Media 1964).  

  The jury on the 'space of flows' and its impacts is still out. Is the world becoming more integrated or more splintered? A 'global village'? Or a 'globe of villages'? We invite papers that consider how global interconnectedness is playing out architecturally/spatially. We are especially interested in studies using contrasting examples: e.g. international award-winning projects compared to locally based or community-driven work; two different cities' approaches to urbanism; different projects in the same city; urban-rural connections; carbon-zero projects compared to LEED platinum. Have architects, designers, and planners become more connected and more socially responsible (as McLuhan suggests)? How does the 'space of flows' affect small communities? What is the impact on classic urban centers? Marginal cities? On spaces disconnected from the 'space of flows'? On the global environment?

• From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand Tour

  
  Patricia Meehan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  Ariela Katz, New York University

  Travel has traditionally been an essential component of Western architectural education, gradually institutionalized since the French Academy in Rome was founded in 1666. Today, as architectural educators’ interest in issues of globalization grows, study abroad models are coming under scrutiny. This session seeks to take stock of flows and disruptions in our ways of studying, and teaching, ‘elsewhere.’ It aims to explore emerging models of global education and the changing academic forces that generate them, with a view towards strategies for adapting critically and creatively to new demands.

  Until recently, architecture Study Abroad Programs were often established by architecture schools themselves. However, the current emergence of university-wide ‘Global Programs’ heralds new challenges and constraints for architectural educators. These challenges are compounded by the growing gap between architecture schools’ commitment to treat study abroad as a serious academic endeavor and students’ desire to use such programs as a springboard for their own “grand tour.” As universities move towards business based models, is there a risk that global programs could become more consumer-oriented and less academic in focus?

  Papers might address how new pressures impact current models of study abroad. These models include brief thematic or ‘greatest hits’ study trips, one or two-semester study abroad programs that function as outposts of parent institutions, and institutional exchanges or partnerships that promote interactions between students and faculty from different schools. How might current study abroad models be adapted to benefit from new opportunities created by the logic of Global Programs while resisting, in a creative and critical way, their potential limits? How might these programs evolve in order to truly become opportunities to expose students to changing global conditions and cultures?

  Papers might also examine larger issues affecting international study today. For example, one might consider evolutions in the choice of locations for study abroad, as attention shifts from traditional European centers to destinations around the world. Alternately, speakers might address the hegemony of the English language in study abroad programs, or the challenges of contending with differences between North American and local institutional practices. Finally, papers might consider the relationship between financial constraints and student expectations in expatriate academic programs.

  Indeed, Global Programs initiatives offer new possibilities for Architecture Schools functioning abroad. Developing shared university facilities in a chosen location can generate greater visibility, bolster interdisciplinary study and resource sharing, reduce expenses and offer increased support in facing daily challenges. Yet the creation of such Global Programs centers also risks diminishing the need or will to get involved in local social, professional and institutional cultures. How can we move towards the diversity, flexibility and openness signaled by thinking globally, while at the same time avoiding the trap of simply identifying new ‘Romes’ and creating new ‘Academies,’ in order to define the study abroad experience of the 21st century?

• Towards a Typification of the Unique – The Tall Building as a Constituent of a Non-generic Urban Future

  
  Eric Firley, University of Miami

  Born in the second part of the 19th century on the streets of Chicago and New York, the tall office and residential building is one of the major architectural innovations of modern times. Though in some occurrences influenced by local building traditions, it became soon after its birth a global export-product that symbolized progress through the iconographic combination of the eternal monumental quest for height with a new type of economic and spatial organization. This winning formula constitutes the success of high-rise, as much as its weakness, when seen from the perspective of academic discourse and education. The focus on superlatives, the enormous investment risk, political and marketing pressures, had a tendency to hinder the emergence of open conceptual discussions and typological studies.

  Growing ecological concerns and the decision of many municipalities to support mixed-use inner-city densification, may open a new chapter and change the communicational paradigm of what is still meant to be marketed as a unique icon, and in reality often perceived as a dark element of a generic neoliberal urbanism.

  For this session, we are asking for papers that will address this new situation, review the opportunities and problems of the tall building’s inherent global nature, and help define the research questions that will complement ongoing technical and economic studies. Proposals will address one or several of the following sub-topics:

  1. Tradition, knowledge and education:

  With approximately 150 years, the contemporary version of high-rise architecture is very young. What does this mean for the promulgation of knowledge in this field, and how does it differ from its low- and mid-rise counterpart? What role does the architect and educator play in this construct? How can computational tools help to further improve the buildings’ design and performances, especially regarding non-structural issues?

  2. The typological export of high-rise:

  The widespread marketing insistence on uniqueness tends to overshadow the existence of intense typological exchange around the world, one example being the tower-on-base configuration that can be followed from Hong Kong over Vancouver to Dubai and Miami. How do these concepts travel, how are they addressed by academia, and what opportunities do the cross-cultural connections offer for the future? Where lays the relevance of vernacular building knowledge in such a vision, and can it - potentially accelerated by growing ecological demands - counteract the emergence of a generic global type?

  3. The question of height and scale:

  Current planning practice and development culture in many cities has led to a strong polarization between low developments on the one hand, and tall towers on the other. What are the reasons for this tendency, and under what circumstances could the middle-height (8-30 stories) enrich the urban experience and contribute to the emergence of more sustainable cities?

  The question of height put aside, how can these constructions relate to the ground floor, support diversity and avoid the break up of historically grown land patterns?

• Architectural Education and Building Resilient Practices in Developing Countries

  
  Anselmo Gianluca Canfora, University of Virginia
  Megan Suau, University of Virginia

  Initiatives focused on realizing projects in developing countries have become important elements of architectural curricula while underscoring the relevance of partnerships with nonprofit organizations and professional firms that work with marginalized communities.  Academic institutions have enabled faculty and students to launch entrepreneurial activities while nonprofit organizations have initiated international design competitions with more frequency to further engage the design academy and profession.  A prevalent sense of urgency shared by stakeholders influences humanitarian design-build projects to tend toward fast-track projects intended to yield timely results and have positive community impact. 

  Institutional structures and organizational practices vary widely as new forms of design entrepreneurship are applied; academic programs or design firms follow diverse trajectories to complete projects on challenging sites with limited resources and in an effective manner.  Delivery methodologies are affected by the complex management of cross-cultural design parameters and often involve tenuous relationships between Western design teams and local partners.  Modest construction budgets and limited access to reliable site, cost, code, and material information further complicate the process of realizing a project.  Often the case, design-build practices assume improvisational ground operations that often result in hybridized solutions – in part a reaction to Western practices adopted de facto to execute project specifications and to some extent conciliation to commonly accepted local methods.  Lack of congruency between intended design, building reference sets, and as-built results challenges short and long-term assessments to gauge best practices and reliable outcomes.

  This session invites critical reflections on design and construction practices led by Western academic programs and firms conducting design-build projects in developing nations.  This session seeks papers which critically describe and analyze the complex untold histories of cross-cultural teams as pertains to design applications, project management, and delivery.  The session serves as a platform to report and debate outcomes of varying degrees of success as well as projects in progress or suspended which can give greater clarity to diverse forms of engaged scholarship and humanitarian work conducted overseas. 

  Accounts of innovative approaches and collaborations between schools of architecture and professional firms that have partnered with nonprofit, community-based organizations, with special attention given to documentation, representation, and communication as relates to the management of construction processes are suggested.  Objective evaluations of successful projects or failed efforts will serve to enrich a discussion of this important form of entrepreneurial design education and practice.  Consider the following: Similar to building information modeling systems used for construction management and coordination in developed countries, how could emergent modes of information-sharing, digital technologies and analog practices, between a host organization and its Western affiliate, be integrated into the design-build process?  How could more proactive roles be given to in-country stakeholders?  Could stronger relationships be ensured between experts and labor retained for the project while fostering opportunities for cross-cultural education for both Western and local partners?  How would unintended consequences resulting from cross-cultural partnerships be effectively used to sustain long-term strategies for disseminating proofs of concept and help toward building local independence and resilience?

• New Orders of Magnitude

  
  Jordan Geiger, University At Buffalo, SUNY

  As so much research now attests, McLuhan’s observation of a Global Village always confronts forms of digital divides: regions and social strata around the world that unevenly gain digital literacy, access to tools and to networks, and more. The fallout is not to be underestimated, as inequity extends from infrastructural placement, service speed and regulation to all forms of access: market, education, health, to name but a few. The built results of these far-reaching inequities perpetuate long-standing patterns of development and decay in the built environment; and in the past twenty years, they have been particularly affected by the increasing proliferation of ubiquitous computing in the built environment.

  What of the many forces that newly coalesce in such a dynamic, beyond the reach of a single government or economic purview? Transnational corporate law, global climate events, and satellite networks are some of the forces that today yield things like GPS-driven “precision agriculture;” mobile centers for high-speed trading; and even new developments for medical tourism. Each of these are spatial and administrative organizations of an altogether new order of magnitude.

  In practice and in pedagogy, we have a new opportunity and urgent need for new methodologies, as we witness the emergence of these new orders of magnitude found in the architecture and technological development of Very Large Organizations (VLOs). VLOs are a phenomenon of our day, as the built environments of work, public assembly, agriculture, incarceration, trade, travel, education, even death join global financial and communications networks. The planning and infrastructure for these command logistics, capital and an order of population magnitude to accommodate volatile shifts with spatial and computational stability. Adaptability is at the crux of dealing with diverse users or publics and unprecedented technical, cultural, social and ecological challenges; and it is where control can give way to engagement and participation.

  VLOs and their new orders of magnitude represent novel areas where architects can - and must - invest themselves: They touch all aspects of public life, civic engagement, social justice and ecological concerns, because they tie together complex legal, environmental and spatial developments that supersede regional or even national regulation. For many reasons, work on VLOs is uniquely suited to the generalist professional skills of architects, even as they demand the assistance of numerous other fields of knowledge like organization theory (Sociology), game theory (Economics) and diverse areas of computer science.

  This panel convenes discussions of work on these new areas of concern, in which architecture is marked by technological and other forces at a scale that transcends the planet. What methodologies and other contributions can architecture make within this new context? How is such a world of new agency to be meaningfully brought to pedagogy? What do new orders of magnitude inspire for new pedagogical approaches that may open fresh inroads in practice?    
• A Teaching Paradigm for Global Practice: Research Studios in the Developing World

  
  Aziza Chaouni, University of Toronto

  Although just beginning to be examined from a pedagogical perspective, the research studio has emerged in the past decade, across architecture schools in North America and Europe, as a popular and proliferating format of both instruction and introduction to global praxis. As a model, the research studio’s genealogy can be retraced to Eames’ documentaries, Venturi’s and Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas and Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York.

  Research studios share a common characteristic: they focus on processes of data gathering and analysis rather than design. Their end product often includes not only the visualization of the complex networks underlying specific urban or architectural phenomena but also the representation of the intersection of design problematics with other disciplines.  As such, the city becomes less a space of intervention, and more a space for inquiry and discovery, where the mundane and the extraordinary, the visible and the invisible are equally sought. These dissecting procedures could ultimately form a lens from which the city can be seen through a visionary, critical viewpoint.

  However, despite its capacity to reformulate the object of architectural research beyond mere technical innovation, the research studio model becomes problematic on several levels including its non-rigorous and uncritical appropriation of other disciplines’ research methods, its rushed in situ analysis, and its tendencies toward oversimplifications of data.  This challenging facet of the research studio has become even the more poignant with the recent advent of the Developing World as favored site of study. If not new, this interest in the Developing World has been accrued not only by the ‘Humanitarian’ trend in the professional and academic design arenas, but also by the architectural programs’ wish to introduce students to global praxis. Examples of research studios in the Developing World abound, the most notable being: Rem Koolhaas’ Lagos research studio at Harvard GSD, Studio Basel’s studios in Egypt and Morocco at ETH, Herzog and de Meuron’s Lagos studio at Harvard GSD, and SlumLab’s studios in Latin America at Columbia University. Given such studios’ short timeframes, limited field research and the complexity of the Developing World’s socio-cultural and environmental contexts, their pedagogical goals and motives should be questioned. To what extent do they prepare students to practicing in foreign settings and becoming familiar with new design approaches and techniques of construction? Given that these studios outcomes are often presented to the host institutions and local collaborators as viable solutions to their plights, do they insinuate a neo-colonial approach to design, or do they foster knowledge exchange? How are they viewed and perceived from Developing World countries? How do Developing World research studios’ methods and outcomes compare and reverberate with research studios set in familiar, Western and European contexts?

  This session seeks papers that: 1) investigate the genealogy of the research studio, its relationship to global practice in general and the Developing World in particular; and 2) analyze and critique the pedagogical model of the research studio, its propensity and strategies to introduce students to global practice, and the challenges it faces.    
• The Architectural Derivative

  
  Curt Anderson Gambetta, Woodbury University

  The global proliferation of contemporary architecture has renewed anxieties about the spectre of copying and reproduction, embodied in the recent controversy surrounding Zaha Hadid’s Wangjing SOHO complex in China and its copy by another office in Chongqing (each in a race to finish construction first, as though to lay claim to originality). Summoning the ghosts of colonialism and post war culturalism, concerns about the copying of ideas and images about architecture in the postcolonial world and Asia renew old debates about the nature of architectural genius while eliding underlying questions about the circulation of modernity around the globe. As political scientist Timothy Mitchell argues, modernity itself is often understood as an original and its copy, locating a center and origin in the West while relegating the postcolonial world to the status of a derivative of the Western experience of modernity. In the milieu of architectural production and expertise, the idea of a center and periphery of modernity is inscribed in distinctions drawn between vernacular/artisanal and authored production as well as Western and postcolonial modernism.

  In contrast to these categorical distinctions, Mitchell and other postcolonial critics such as James Clifford insist that the reproduction of cultural life is at the heart of modernity’s travels, even within the West itself. Instead of dismissing its mutations as anti-modern or ‘alternatively modern,’ they suggest that we critically evaluate the idea of discrepant forms of modernity, a model of cultural circulation that suggests both the power of modernity’s gatekeepers and the potential of its transformation. In light of these observations, copying, counterfeiting and other forms of insubordinate reproduction may in fact transform ideas about knowledge, property and innovation that are associated with architectural design.

  Rather than dismiss the architectural derivative, the panel will consider the cultural, economic and political conditions that underpin the production of derivative architectures, examining their consequences for architectural production, learning and reception. Echoing insightful arguments about media piracy in Asia, discussion will move beyond a consideration of the content of reproduction alone and instead link the content of what is reproduced to the context of its reproduction and movement across different cultural and constructional domains. What maps of cultural circulation are drawn by these routes of travel, and in what ways are these sites and practices of reproduction discrepant with existing notions of cultural difference, design expertise and technical innovation? The panel invites papers that examine both contemporary and historical contexts of derivation and copying from the late 19th century to the present.

• The Elements of Urban Intelligence: New Pedagogies in Global Architectural Theory

  
  Dimitris Papanikolaou, Harvard University

  In ME++, William Mitchell described cities in the 21st century as intelligent networked environments that use electronic nervous systems of sensors, microprocessors, and actuators to monitor and control flow and availability of resources in space-time. Applications include energy distribution grids, transportation networks, distributed computing platforms, and other resource allocation systems. What is often unclear in similar descriptions is how information from the physical world turns into to decision and action. Who senses the world, who distributes information, who makes decisions, who takes actions, and who evaluates the results?

  Many architecture schools today embrace the field of media technology into their curricula. Lacking a technoscientific background, often these approaches tend to either theorize the status quo of the industry, or explore applications of interaction design prioritizing the means over the ends. The leap from interaction to coordination requires a more strategic approach. In large networked environments, the more resources a user consumes the fewer are available to others. Classic game theory shows that in such cases, informed rational behavior may cause the entire ecosystem to collapse, suggesting that constructing intelligence is not about facilitating access to resources, but often about maintaining a balanced allocation of them.

  This session will explore the role of technology, policy, and design in the educational discourse of intelligent networked environments. We invite researchers, practitioners, and educators to submit papers addressing some of the following questions: What is urban intelligence, how is it constructed, and how is it studied? Are we confronting the origins of a new discipline, and if so, which educational domains should it encompass? How do we create “living labs,” or large-scale experiments in architectural schools? What organizational models and what applications of networked intelligence exist in architecture and urbanism? Areas of interest include: game theory, behavioral economics, and mechanism design; information, communication, and organizational theory; cybernetics, systems thinking and control theory; physical computing, interaction design, and data visualization, with a perspective of how these areas can shape contemporary architectural education, research, and practice on intelligent networked environments.

• Building Change: Public Interest Design as Catalyst

  
  John Comazzi, University of Minnesota
  Jim Lutz, University of Minnesota

  As the discipline of architecture evolves in response to an increasing number of global challenges – economic volatility, socio-political turmoil, devastating climate-change, accelerating population growth – the question of how the field addresses the needs of the most vulnerable among us should be counted as essential.  Public Interest Design, a developing area of specialization within the profession, specifically considers the concerns of the vast majority of the world’s inhabitants who are historically under-resourced and ill-equipped to respond to the grand challenges facing humankind.

  The premise for this session is a fundamental, yet potentially controversial one: That the architectural profession has an ethical responsibility to serve all of humanity, not just the tip of the socio-economic pyramid.  This assertion raises several pedagogical questions:

  • How does the concept of a humanitarian basis for practice fundamentally shift the profession and the academy?
  • How does the knowledge base required to prepare students for this area of practice differ from a typical design curriculum? 
  • Is the requisite skill set different for domestic and international settings?  If so, how?
  • What other academic fields must be included in the creation of an interdisciplinary curriculum of this kind?
  • Is there a sustainable business model for this type of practice or is it condemned to volunteerism and Pro-Bono work?
  • In this context, is the ability to teach and empower others to design as important as the ability to design itself?  If so, how do we better prepare the next generation of architects for this role as collaborator?

  This session will examine and discuss projects and programs that manifest the objectives of Public Interest Design through studio, research, and field work.  Specifically, the panel will consider projects and programs that have been developed in close collaboration with stakeholders to create holistic, human-centered responses to architectural challenges at a variety of scales.  Participants will be asked to use their projects to critically reflect on the pedagogical and curricular issues they’ve encountered undertaking work and teaching of this kind.

  The ambition underlying the session is that this topic will encourage more educators to consider the needs of the estimated 6 billion people worldwide that do not have access to any form of architectural assistance and incorporate this fact in their approach to pedagogy. 
• OPEN SESSIONS

         
  ACSA will be offering several open sessions for papers that do not fit under the general theme of the conference. We encourage the submission of well-crafted papers on topics that explore a range of issues within architectural education and practice. The selected papers will be grouped according to overarching themes that emerge from the open call.