Resilient Futures: AIA/ACSA Intersections Research Conference (2022)
AIAU23-ACSA22-S
8 Courses
Course expires on: 01/24/2026
Description
The acceleration of climate change and climate migration has created an unprecedented diversity of challenges that our built environment and communities must face in the coming decades. This acceleration is matched by a growing diversity of research and design efforts to counteract these challenges—both in academia and practice—centered around concepts of resiliency. This conference invites practitioners, scholars, and policy leaders engaged in shaping the future of resilience to identify challenges shaping the built environment, as well as the emerging tools, methods, practices designed to address the challenges ahead.
AIA/ACSA Intersections Research Conference: RESILIENT FUTURES 2022
The focus of the INTERSECTIONS programs is intended to strengthen the INTERSECTION between academia and design practice, especially when it comes to research and innovation, focused on resilience strategies.
Learning Objectives
Discover principles of resilient design in the built environment.
Discover the connection between healthy, resilient neighborhoods greenspace and violence levels.
Explore scales of engagement with design stakeholders from community and urban planning to site design and incorporating feedback.
Discover how to cultivate resilience through the practice of socio-ecological design and experimentation in form-making.
2022 AIA/ACSA Intersections Research Conference: RESILIENT FUTURES
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Amale Andraos co-founded WORKac in 2003 with Dan Wood. She is a Principal of the firm and also a Professor and Dean Emerita at Columbia University where she currently serves as an Advisor to the President on the University’s Climate Initiatives and the Climate School. Andraos is recognized as an architecture thought leader and lectures widely. Her publications include The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, a critical engagement of con-temporary architecture and urbanism in the Middle East, We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge, an overview of the firm’s first fifteen years of practice, and 49 Cities, a re-reading of 49 visionary urban plans through an ecological lens. Andraos is currently Chair of the Aga Khan Award and President of the Phi Contemporain International Competition. She has served on the Walton on the selection committee for the Walton Family Foundation’s Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence program and is currently serving on the board of the Architectural League of New York, and the Advisory Council for the New Museum’s incubator space New Inc, in New York. She is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC). Andraos was born in Beirut, Lebanon.
Stephen Mueller was the co-chair of the 2022 AIA/ACSA Intersections Research Conference: Resilient Futures. Mueller is the founding Director of Research at POST (Project for Operative Spatial Technologies), a territorial think-tank and CoA research center situated on the US-Mexico border. POST engages transformations in the borderland through projects intersecting urban geography, border studies, and digital humanities. Stephen Mueller's research seeks novel applications for emerging spatial technologies to analyze, engage, and transform urban environments. Mueller's work leverages techniques of automation, sensing, visualization, and simulation to analyze, represent, predict, and operate within nascent binational environmental conditions.
Neeraj Bhatia is a licensed architect and urban designer from Toronto, Canada. His work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. He is an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts where he also co-directs the urbanism research lab, The Urban Works Agency. Bhatia has also held teaching positions at UC Berkeley as the Visiting Esherick Professor, UT Arlington as the Visiting Ralph Hawkins Professor, Cornell University, Rice University, and the University of Toronto. Neeraj is also founder of The Open Workshop, a transcalar design-research office examining the negotiation between architecture and its territorial environment. In 2016, The Open Workshop was awarded the Architectural League Young Architects Prize.
Elisandra Garcia is an activist, designer, and educator from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Elisandra is currently a Visiting Professor of Architecture at the Portland Architecture Program, for the University of Oregon. As the Design for Spatial Justice Fellow, Garcia has created the Urban Violence Laboratory PDX, where graduate students craft an architectural thesis proposal driven by social and environmental justice prompts, collectively and individually responding to an Urban Violence issue in Portland. Students work closely with community organizations and experts in selected topics of investigation. Being born and raised in the border town of Juárez, Mexico, amplified her curiosity and drive to understand urban violence, its consequences, and possible solutions. Her creative practice, Eli Studio focuses on small scale design interventions created by grassroots activism. To make this possible, Eli Studio curates and directs art, fashion, music, and dance shows in benefit of community groups and non-profit organizations who are courageously working to stabilize cities and communities under severe violent environments. These public engagements are designed as exhibitions to disseminate the research while providing platforms for artists, activists, and small businesses. Garcia believes in the power of personal narrative, academia, and activism in the search for equity. Elisandra is also a Projector Designer and Director of Engagement and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at El Dorado Architects in Portland. Some of her currents are the Parrott Creek Youth At Risk Transitional Housing Campus and the Albina Vision Trust Masterplan Phase 2.
Johnna (she/her) is a registered architect and specializes in sustainable design and consulting. Leading the green building efforts for corporations, local governments, schools and universities, and research labs, she is often forging new paths in sustainability, including living buildings, net zero energy projects, and a long list of "firsts" — first project to re-use non-potable water in New Orleans, first LEED project for DeKalb County Schools in Georgia, first net zero energy project for the City of Columbus, and first WELL project for The Ohio State University. She appreciates a good challenge and helping people get comfortable with unfamiliar ideas. Her work at the intersection of sustainability and accessibility began during a tour of a deep green building with a group of disabled participants, who discovered only stair access. This event sparked her article, “The Politics of Stairs,” which appeared in the journal Design Equilibrium and was reprinted in the Norton Field Guide to Writing. She has spoken on the topic of sustainability and accessibility at conferences both in the U.S. and abroad. Johnna is passionate about regenerative design, approaches the built environment as a foundation for well-being, and posits climate change as a social justice issue. Johnna currently works on the Sustainability & Resilience team for Parsons, and resides in Columbus, Ohio.
Aimée Moore is a Senior Lecturer at the Knowlton School where she has taught since 1999 and is the recipient of the 2016 OSU Provost Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Lecturer. She teaches courses on Global Architecture, Sustainability in Architecture, architecture in Columbus, OH and education abroad programs to Italy, The Netherlands, London, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago, Chilé. Through her varied classes she develops new understandings of the built environment, particularly through drawing. She incorporates iPads to explore drawing digitally through classes she teaches, and has presented at conferences regarding active learning and equity using iPads. Her research focuses on architecture in Columbus Ohio and Latin American architecture developed through various seminars, education abroad trips and conference presentations. She is Chair for the Committee on Design at AIA Columbus and actively engaged in learning communities at Ohio State University where she expands her perspectives on teaching. She received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Master of Architecture degree from The Ohio State University Knowlton School.
Erin Reilly-Sanders (she/they) is both a practicing architect and scholar. Her work at Schooley Caldwell Architects in Columbus, Ohio focuses on civic architecture such as the new Hockings Hills State Park Lodge for Ohio Department of Natural Resources, higher education work at The Ohio State University, and new and renovated buildings for Columbus Metropolitan Library. As a senior associate, she mentors many of the junior architects and technical staff within the firm, setting up technical training and registration exam support. Dr. Reilly-Sanders also serves on the Board of Directors and the Committee on the Environment of the Columbus Chapter of American Institute of Architects. As a scholar, she has a PhD in Education (Literature for Children and Young Adults) from the Ohio State University. Blending Architecture and Education, Dr. Reilly-Sanders often focuses on the visual aspects of literature. Her dissertation exemplified this with mixed-methods research into the visual motif of the house and its cultural impacts upon the reader. Dr. Reilly-Sanders is one of the current editors of Charlotte Huck's Children's Literature: A Brief Guide, a leading children’s literature textbook since 1961. For Autumn 2022, she is teaching Introduction to Children’s Literature at The Ohio State University’s Columbus Campus.
Dr. Bess Williamson is a historian of design and material culture and Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (2019) and co-editor of Making Disability Modern: Design Histories (2020). Her work explores diverse histories and practices of design that extend expertise to users and communities, and challenge designers to address access and power in their work. For 2022-2023, she is director of SAIC's Art History MA programs.
Joanna Lombard, is a registered architect and Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture with a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine and is a 2019-2021 Abess Faculty Scholar in the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. A founding member of the UM Built-Environment Behavior & Health Research Group with funded projects in the area of neighborhood design and health, she investigates the impacts of greenness and greening initiatives.
As author and co-author of articles, book chapters, and books, she contributed “The Landscape Design Principles of William Lyman Phillips in the First Heritage Parks,” to Building Eden, The Beginning of Miami-Dade County’s Visionary Park System, which was the recipient of 2021 Florida Trust Award. She is co-leader of one of the eleven university-based teams selected as charter members of the American Institute of Architects Design & Health Research Consortium, and a member of the University of Miami U-LINK team exploring “Hyper-localism: Transforming the Paradigm for Climate Adaptation.” She also works with colleagues in the national research and design collective, Practice Landscape founded in 2006 by Rosetta S. Elkin.
Lesa is Gresham Smith’s Healthcare Director of Research & Insights. She collaborates with the healthcare team to conduct research on human-centered design and develop scalable tools for knowledge sharing among healthcare planners and designers. Using design thinking strategies, she helps clients and project teams identify opportunities for evidence-based design research and strategically implement research projects. Lesa also develops external collaborative partnerships and she has collaborated on research funded by the Veterans Health Administration and the American Institute of Architects. She was the principal investigator for a clinical trial with the VA investigating multisensory environments for people with dementia, which resulted in the Environmental Design Research Association’s Certificate of Research Excellence. Additionally, her research at Gresham Smith-designed Tallahassee Memorial Hospital M.T. Mustian Center on how evidence-based design strategies can decrease sensory stress in intensive care units earned the project team a Platinum-Level Touchstone Award from The Center for Health Design.
Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, D.Arch., FAIA is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and director of the Institute for Healthy Futures at Cornell University. A fellow in the American Institute of Architects, she has LEED AP, WELL, and EDAC credentials. Dr. Shepley has authored/co-authored six books, the most recent of which is Design for Mental and Behavioral Health (2017). Her recent papers have focused on the design of mental and behavioral health environments and the impact of nature on human behavior.
Dr. Julie Zook is an assistant professor at the Texas Tech College of Architecture. Her research focuses on society, health, and architecture. With colleagues, she recently published the co-edited book “The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture,” which presents new research and reflective essays on the design and social life of hospitals. She is a board member of the Texas Tech University Humanities Center. This year she is co-leading a cross-disciplinary speaker series, film series, and spring conference on the theme of health sponsored by the Humanities Center. Outside of the university, she is a board member and research chair for the Foundation for Health Environments Research and owner of the consultancy Spatial Form.
Andrew L. Dannenberg, is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences and in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, where he teaches courses on health and built environment and on health impact assessment. Before coming to Seattle, he served as Team Leader of the Healthy Community Design Initiative in the National Center for Environmental Health at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For the past 20 years, his research and teaching have focused on examining the health aspects of community design, including land use, transportation, urban planning, equity, climate change and other issues related to the built environment. He has a particular interest in the use of a health impact assessment as a tool to inform community planners about the health consequences of their decisions. Previously, he served as director of CDC's Division of Applied Public Health Training, as Preventive Medicine Residency director and injury prevention epidemiologist on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and as a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Dr. Dannenberg is board-certified in preventive medicine (1986-present). He completed a residency in family practice at the Medical University of South Carolina and was board-certified in family practice (1982-1989).
Chris is the Living Building Challenge Services Director, senior architect and author with The Miller Hull Partnership in Seattle with a variety of project experience including five certified Living Buildings and several more currently in design and construction. His book, Living Building Education, chronicles the story behind his first Living Building, the Bertschi School. Chris founded the Seattle 2030 Roundtable and co-founded the Healthy Materials Collaborative. A Living Future Accredited professional and a Living Building Challenge Hero, Chris is a university guest lecturer and speaker at conferences across the country. He works on state and local environmental policy, publishes articles and volunteers with local school groups mentoring students about sustainable practices and advocacy. As an Affiliate Instructor with the University of Washington, Chris teaches a graduate sustainability course for the College of Built Environments. Chris is also recipient of the AIA’s Young Architect Award.
Jordan Luther is a second year Master of Architecture student at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture with minors in Art History and Building Construction Technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst during the Spring of 2021. Her interdisciplinary research project focuses on biophilic design patterns and their impact on human perception and health in hospital patient rooms. The CRIT program has been tremendously beneficial in her experience and enabled her to become deeply engaged in the realm of evidence based design research. Luther had the opportunity to further her research by submitting her protocol to the Institutional Review Board and meeting with medical professionals to refine her study. She additionally had the pleasure of collaborating with designers and academic professionals to develop a better understanding of the evidence based design research process and its application to biophilic design. Luther’s experience in the CRIT Scholar program will be critical as she crafts her masters thesis investigating alternative design solutions to create safe, eco-ethical healing spaces for trauma patients, to alleviate ICU delirium.
As Vice President of Urban Resilience, Lindsay Brugger leads the Urban Land Institute’s Urban Resilience Program. Through research, technical assistance, convenings, and outreach, ULI’s Urban Resilience Program helps ULI members, the public, and communities across the globe make buildings and cities more resilient to the impacts of climate change. Prior to joining ULI, Lindsay was the Director of Resilience Knowledge and Engagement at the American Institute of Architects. During her tenure, she championed resilience, climate adaptation, and disaster assistance; co-creating tools and resources such as the Resilience and Adaptation Education Series, The Architect’s Guide to Business Continuity, and the Disaster Assistance Handbook to help AIA’s 95,000 members build new skillsets, integrate resilience into practice, and support their communities pre- and post-disaster. A licensed architect and certified passive house consultant, Lindsay’s resilience journey began while volunteering with Architecture for Humanity DC where she co-founded and directed the Resilience by Design program to provide technical assistance, organize educational offerings, host convenings, and promote the value of a resilient built environment. Lindsay received a Master of Architecture and B.S. in Architecture from Roger Williams University; as well as the Alpha Rho Chi Medal for her leadership and service.
Andrew Colopy is Partner and Creative Director of Cobalt Office, and Associate Professor and Co-Director of Construct at Rice University. His teaching, research and practice examine the use of digital technology in the theory and practice of architecture, and he has worked with prominent cultural institutions to realize buildings for art and education, housing and urban environments. Andrew is a graduate of Columbia University, a former Van Alen Institute Fellow and taught previously at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to Cobalt, he was senior designer at Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Tian Feng is the District Architect of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), and was an architectural advisor on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) Advisory Committee. Appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, Feng is currently an Executive Member of California State Architects Board. Feng has broad responsibilities for BART’s infrastructure. He created and administrates BART Facilities Standards which has provided design and construction standards for station’s and infrastructural investment valued over billions of dollars. He initiated climate change adaptation effort by partnering with Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and developed systems resiliency strategies at BART. He has also pioneered many sustainability initiatives and formulated BART Sustainability Policy in 2002. He is the founder and chief editor of the Transit Sustainability Guidelines, a project sponsored by US EPA and DOT and published by American Public Transportation Association (APTA).
Diane is Principal Landscape Architect with DesignJones LLC which received the 2016 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Community Service Award. Diane is part of one of two cross disciplinary teams that won the 2020 SOM Foundation Research Prize focused on examining social justice in urban contexts. She was a 2021-2022 fellow for Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, where is undertook research on Maroons in coastal Louisiana. Her research and practice are guided by the intersection of environmental justice, identity, and sustainability in cultural landscapes, as also discussed in her book “Lost in the Transit Desert: Race, Transit Access, and Suburban Form” published by Routledge Press in 2017. In 2017, she served on the ASLA Blue Ribbon Panel on Climate Change and Resiliency, and currently serves on ASLA’s Climate Task Force.
Kelly Fleming is a professional landscape architect with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from University of Maryland and Master degrees in Landscape Architecture and Design Studies from the Graduate School of Design (GSD) at Harvard University. Her experience spans more than 25 years of academic and professional work within the public and private sectors. She has worked for award‐winning firms in New York and the Baltimore‐Washington region bringing a unique perspective to the profession infusing function into form through her work and experience managing stormwater in communities with the Low Impact Development Center. Now with the non-profit Neighborhood Design Center (NDC) in Prince George’s County and Baltimore, Kelly’s professional and academic background has given her an understanding of ecological principles that she uses to guide the design, planting and maintenance of landscapes and their integration in support of communities and resilience within the built environment.
Robin Seidel has been at the forefront of integrating resilience into design and planning. Robin is the Resiliency Team Leader at Weston & Sampson, a multi-disciplinary engineering firm where she focuses on not only addressing climate change, but also ensuring that her projects benefit environmentally disenfranchised populations. Her technical expertise in city resilience, building and infrastructure adaptation, vulnerability assessments, transportation, and stakeholder engagement. She is the 2022 Co-Chair for the AIA National Resilience & Adaptation Advisory Group.
Melissa Wackerle is a climate action strategist with a 20+ years of experience in sustainable design and construction plus Master’s degree in Sustainability and Development. Her background ranges from green building certification management to enterprise and community consulting, Carbon Disclosure Project reporting, energy and water efficiency recommendations and green construction practices. She has contributed to numerous AIA programs, including the launch of the award-winning A&D Materials Pledge since joining the AIA in 2014.
Joyce Hwang is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and Founder of Ants of the Prairie. She is a recipient of the Exhibit Columbus University Research Design Fellowship (2020-21), the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award (2014), the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship (2013), the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Independent Project Grant (2013, 2008), and the MacDowell Fellowship (2016, 2011). Her work has been featured by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and exhibited at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Matadero Madrid, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Rotterdam International Architecture Biennale, among other venues. Hwang is on the Steering Committee for US Architects Declare, serves as a Core Organizer for Dark Matter University, and is on the editorial board for the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). Hwang is a registered architect in New York State, and has practiced professionally with offices in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Barcelona.
Mitch is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Associate Professor of Practice at NYU. Mitchell upholds noteworthy leadership roles as a University Senator and Co-Chair of Global Design NYU. Formerly, he worked as an architect at the professional of offices of Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, Moshe Safdie in Massachusetts, and I.M. Pei in New York. He has won many awards including: Fulbright Scholarship, LafargeHolcim Acknowledgement Prize, Ove Arup Foundation Grant, Architect R+D Award, AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, 1st Place International Architecture Award, Zumtobel Award for Sustainability, Architizer A+ Award, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities. He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Safdie Architects, and the Martin Society for Sustainability at MIT. Mitchell was featured in numerous articles: “The 100 People Who Are Changing America” in Rolling Stone, “The Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To” in Wired, “50 Under 50 Innovators of the 21st Century” by Images Publishing Group, “The NOW 99” in Dwell, and “Future of The Environment” in Popular Science. He co-authored four books, “Super Cells: Building with Biology” (TED Books), “Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned” (Prestel, 2014), “XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design” (Actar 2016), and “Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities” (Actar 2019). His design work has been exhibited in numerous locations including MoMA in New York, DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, MASS MoCA in North Adams, The Building Centre in London, DAZ in Berlin, OCAD in Toronto, NAI in Rotterdam, Seoul Biennale, and Venice Biennale. Previously, he was the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto and faculty at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Rensselaer, Washington (St. Louis), Cornell, Parsons, and EGS. He earned a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD at Harvard University, M.Arch at Columbia University with honors.
Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer, and scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of architecture, technology and environmental politics. She is an Associate Professor at the Cooper Union in New York. Previously, she taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she directed the Master of Science Program, at Syracuse University, Columbia University [GSAPP] and Pratt Institute; she was also a visiting fellow at the University of Queensland and a visiting professor at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. Her work has been published and exhibited widely including the Venice Biennial, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Shenzhen Biennial, the Oslo Architecture Trienalle, the Onassis Cultural Center, the Lisbon Triennale, the Royal Academy of British Architects, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and the London Design Museum. She is the author of the awarded book The Architecture of Closed Worlds, Or, What is the Power of Shit (Lars Muller Publishers, 2018), the History of Ecological Design for Oxford English Encyclopedia of Environmental Science and the editor of EcoRedux, a special issue of Architectural Design magazine (AD, 2010). Kallipoliti holds a Diploma in Architecture and Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, a Master of Science [SMArchS] in design and building technology from MIT and a PhD in history and theory of architecture from Princeton University. She is the principal of ANAcycle thinktank, which has been named a leading innovator in sustainable design in Build’s 2019 and 2020 awards. Kallipoliti is Head Co-Curator of the upcoming Tallinn Architecture Biennale in 2022 with the theme “Edible, Or, The Architecture of Metabolism.”
Kais Al-Rawi, AIA works at the intersection of architecture, engineering and technology with expertise in solving complex building challenges through digital design. He the Enclosure Design Leader at the Los Angeles office of Walter P Moore. His experience has been leveraged on a number of high-profile projects including SoFi Stadium, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, New Orleans Airport, among others. He is a subject matter expert in computational design and its implementation in the AEC industry from concept to construction
Dana Cupkova holds Associate Professorship at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture and is a Co-founder and Director of EPIPHYTE Lab, an architectural design and research collaborative. From 2005 to 2012 she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Cornell University Department of Architecture. From 2014 to 2018 she served on the ACADIA Board of Directors and currently she is on the Editorial Board for the IJAC. Professor Cupkova is Track Chair of SoA’s Masters of Science in Sustainable Design (MSSD) program. Cupkova's design work engages the built environment at the intersection of ecology, computationally driven processes, and systems analysis. In her research, she interrogates the relationship between design-space and ecology as it engages computational methods, thermodynamic processes, and experimentation with geometrically driven performance logic.
Ariane Laxo is Director of Sustainability at HGA. She leads HGA’s resilience planning services, including collaborating with climate scientists to understand how climate projection models can be downscaled and used to inform architecture and engineering workflows. Ariane is an adjunct professor at Kent State University, serves on the AIA Resilience & Adaptation Advisory Group and the Advisory Board of the University of Minnesota’s Climate Adaptation Partnership. Earlier this year, Ariane and Parag co-authored Projected climate data for building design: barriers to use, a peer-reviewed paper published in Buildings & Cities.
Parag Rastogi is a building scientist with a background in civil engineering and 10 years’ experience in research and development. He joined arbnco after working and studying at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, Japan. At arbnco he supports the product development teams with research on building decarbonisation, health and wellbeing, IoT-based controls, integrating climate risk analysis into building performance evaluation and planning, and the use of machine learning and data science in software and hardware for buildings. Parag is also a visiting instructor at CEPT University, Ahmedabad.
Jose Sanchez is an Architect, Game Designer, and Theorist based in Detroit, Michigan. He is the director of the Plethora Project (www.plethora-project.com ), a research studio investing in the future of the propagation of architectural design knowledge. He is the creator of the video games Block’hood and Common’hood, digital social platforms that aid the authoring of architectural and ecological thinking to non-expert audiences. He is the author of the book “Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms” published by Routledge in 2020 and the co-creator of Bloom, a crowdsourced interactive installation which was the winner of the Wonder Series hosted by the City of London for the 2012 Olympics. He has taught in renowned institutions in the United States and in Europe, including the Architectural Association in London, The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, at the University of Southern California. He is currently at the University of Michigan, where he is an Associate Professor at the Taubman College School of Architecture. His research “Architecture for the Commons” designs and interrogates social media platforms as tools with the potential to author architectural content in the public domain.
Courses
Opening Keynote: Amale Andraos
Amale Andraos, FRAIC, presents recent projects demonstrating principles of resilience and high performance design strategies. She speaks to the methods available to architects even when confronted with small budgets and tight timelines. Amale also appears in conversation with conference co-chair and research assistant professor Stephen Mueller to discuss the challenges of designing in areas of social and environmental instability and highlights the strength of connecting academia with practice in an intentional way.
Course expires 01/25/2026
Equitable Futures: Special Focus Session
This panel will explore what equity means through the lens of accessible and universal design. Panelists will highlight the barriers to disabled students in architectural education, accessibility as critical to sustainability and resilience and diversity and equity-focused practices in critiques. Spatial equity and inclusivity will be highlighted and evaluated from the viewpoint of the academy as well as in practice.
Course expires 1/25/2026
Healthy Futures: Plenary Session
This plenary will present the latest research on designing for heath, both within healthcare environments and in a wider urban setting. Healthcare morphologies and research on green space will be explored as well as research discoveries occurring in practice.
Course expires 1/25/2026
Healthy Futures: Special Focus Session
This session will delve into tools and techniques in healthcare design to improve outcomes and plan for resilience. Using artificial intelligence to evaluate and discover scenarios for preventative design in healthcare spaces will be uncovered as well as material health in healthcare settings. Using nature to increase patient outcomes will also be explored, including ongoing research with human subjects in a healthcare setting.
Course expires 1/25/2026
Engaged Futures: Plenary Session
From the viewpoint of various scales, from planning to ADU design, resilience through client engagement will be explored in this session. Learn how architects and architectural students can be advocates for both their clients and for improved policies and codes. See how a design/build studio is helping to improve policy decisions on the ground as a direct outcome of student project work.
Course expires 1/18/2026
Engaged Futures: Special Focus Session
This panel will explore historical and contemporary relationships between communities and landscapes, urban forests and coastline resilience concerns. Urban forestry, coastal wetlands and industrial landscapes will be interrogated and unpacked to discover impacts on surrounding communities. Challenges such as tackling gentrification, facilitating deep community engagement and providing equitable access to open spaces will be explored.
Course expires 1/25/2026
Expanded Futures: Plenary Session
This session will explore artist and designer responses to environmental resilience. Using nature as inspiration these designers have investigated what it means to create a closed-system environment, what we can learn from other organisms and how we can push our own thinking about the futures of the built environment.
Course expires 1/25/2026
Expanded Futures: Special Focus Session
Go behind the scenes to discover the science, techniques and software used to create both usable data sets for architects and exploratory design platforms. This panel will uncover the actual processes used to pull weather data and climate analysis to influence design decision-making as well as explore the game creation process. It will explore the ways designers are responding to the challenge of potential climate catastrophe and how resilient principles can help avert a dangerous future.
Course expires 1/25/2026