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How technology is changing the practice of architecture will be forum subject

NJIT's College of Architecture and Design (COAD) will host a public forum on the changing status of technology in architectural practice and the emerging potential for the role of architecture in the design of the built environment. The NJ Chapter of the American Institute of Architects will sponsor the free event, open to the public, set for Oct. 28, 2009, 1:15 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Noted architects and educators—many from NJIT--will discuss their work as material evidence of emerging forms of contemporary design practice, the various technologies being used, and to what end they are being applied.

COAD Dean Urs Gauchat will provide opening remarks. Other participants will include NJIT Assistant Professors Matt Burgermaster, of MABU Design; Rhett Russo, of Orange Horse, NYC, Richard Garber, of GRO Architects and Douglas Gauthier, of Gauthier Architects, NJIT Associate Professor Gabrielle Esperdy and NJIT Professor Peter Papademetriou. Garber and Burgermaster organized the event.

In recent years, contemporary architecture has been fundamentally changed by the evolution of digital technologies as a mainstream production process, sometimes as a design technique, and even as a way of thinking.

These developments have opened new relationships between previously divergent - and sometimes irreconcilable - terms of material and virtual, representation and production, process and product. Amidst these changes, emerging information and fabrication technologies have acted as a catalyst for disciplinary experimentation with complex form and, more recently, in the realignment of traditional relationships between design and construction. Similarly, they have led to explorations of new models of design integration and professional collaboration.

Fundamentally changing how architects work, these disciplinary shifts and explorations parallel substantial changes to the various environmental, social, and economic conditions within which architecture is produced and encountered. Within this evolving - and often unstable - context for practice, technology's application to design has consequently produced an increasingly complex understanding of what contemporary design itself is, its objectives and values.

The symposium will consider the interrelations between changes occurring both within and beyond architecture proper and their corollary challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities. As emerging technologies grow more ubiquitous and sophisticated, they will play an increasingly influential role in design. The conference will further examine the impact and potential of these technologies on design practices and how the discipline's application of technology to design will enable architecture as a productive agent of change within the broader conditions of the world-at-large.

NJIT, New Jersey's science and technology university, at the edge in knowledge, enrolls more than 8,400 students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 92 degree programs offered by six colleges: Newark College of Engineering, College of Architecture and Design, College of Science and Liberal Arts, School of Management, Albert Dorman Honors College and College of Computing Sciences. NJIT is renowned for expertise in architecture, applied mathematics, wireless communications and networking, solar physics, advanced engineered particulate materials, nanotechnology, neural engineering and e-learning. In 2009, Princeton Review named NJIT among the nation's top 25 campuses for technology and among the top 150 for best value. U.S. News & World Report's 2010 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT in the top tier of national research universities.

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