2019 ACADIA Conference Recap

Earlier this semester, UTSOA hosted the 2019 Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) conference. As one of the preeminent organizations addressing computation in architecture, ACADIA brought together more than 300 researchers, educators, and design professionals from around the world for three days of inquiry and discourse centered around computational design and emerging technology in architecture.

Organized by conference co-chairs and UTSOA Associate Professors Kory Bieg, Danelle Briscoe, and Clay Odom, the theme of this year’s conference was “Ubiquity & Autonomy.” During the course of the conference and the hands-on workshops that preceded it, attendees investigated the increasingly blurry divide between analog and digital processes and how such pervasive computational power might require new theories, modes of operation, and systems of production for architecture.

UTSOA faculty who participated in ACADIA 2019 include:

• Associate Professor Ulrich Dangel, who led the Robotic Timber paper session;
• Assistant Professor Aleksandra Jaeschke, who chaired a paper session about Patterns; and
• Assistant Professor Daniel Koehler, who chaired the AI, Deep Learning, Data paper session, and helped organize the 2019 ACADIA Pecha Kucha

Several UTSOA students also had the opportunity to participate in the hands-on workshops leading up to the conference, where they explored new digital workflows as well as computational and mixed-reality tools guided by experts in the field.  Over the course of the three-day workshops, participants made use of UTSOA’s many technology resources, including the new tech-savvy classrooms and review spaces on the 5th floor of the West Mall Building, and the Tech Lab’s two KUKA Robotic arms.