Faculty News:

LONN COMBS AND CHRIS PERRY AS ACADIA 2015 CONFERENCE CHAIRS

Assistant Professors Lonn Combs and Chris Perry will serve as Technical Chairs of the 2015 ACADIA conference: “Computational Ecologies: Design in the Anthropocene.” ACADIA, as the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, is an international network of digital design researchers and professionals. ACADIA’s aim is to facilitate critical investigations into the role of computation in architecture, planning, and building science, encouraging innovation in design creativity, sustainability, and education.

“Computational Ecologies: Design in the Anthropocene” will take place October 22nd-24th at the University of Cincinnati School of Architecture and Interior Design. Workshops are scheduled for October 19th-21st, and a hackathon is scheduled for October 25th. This conference seeks to engage the new period of the Anthropocene, a period characterized by the “anthropic” effects of human activity as a new geophysical force on Earth, by raising the question as to whether architecture should embark on establishing new affiliations beyond the human; a fundamental redefinition of the discipline as something no longer significant for “us” alone. The conference poses the critical question: If the Anthropocene has ushered in a new era of existential threat for human civilization, how does architecture not only rethink conventional forms of “program,” and by extension “performance,” privileging nonhuman alongside human forms of “use,” but a new material, formal, and spatial aesthetics as well?

Professors Combs and Perry are joined by Director William Williams, Professor Mara Marcu, Professor Stephen Slaughter, and Professor Ming Tang of the University of Cincinnati, and Brian Ringley, of Pratt Institute in chairing this annual conference. Combs and Perry currently teach at the Rensselaer School of Architecture and cultivate their own practices, EASTON+COMBS, and pneumastudio, respectively. For more information on Lonn Combs, Chris Perry, the conference, and ACADIA, please see the links below.

2015 Conference : here

ACADIA : here

Lonn Combs : here

Chris Perry : here

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