ACADIA 2020: Distributed Proximities conference features fourteen sessions of peer-reviewed research, organized thematically. The chairs, including Adam Marcus, worked with the ACADIA President and Board of Directors to organize the virtual conference. Session chairs, including Negar Kalantar, moderated the conversations of the fourteen sessions.
Congratulations to CCA MAAD student Jiries Alali for presenting his work Casting on a Dump: Using Sand as a Form-Generating Formwork, with Negar Kalantar and Alireza Borhani at Paper Session 11: Disrupted Practice, Collaboration, Workflows, and Labor.
Description:
Abrupt shifts due to the global pandemic have precipitated myriad experiments in remoteness, improvised virtual communities, and rapid retooling to address novel urgencies. These circumstances provide an opportunity to reflect upon practices and priorities, to recognize the interdependent coevolutionary nature of our planet, society, and built environment, and to collectively re-imagine alternate futures.
Acknowledging the volatile disruptions of normal routines, Distributed Proximities aims to explore the complex contours of the moment by privileging operative modalities and their (re)organizational logics. The term “distributed computing” refers to any parallel computation process that partitions a complicated task into discrete quanta. Originally relying upon an operating system architecture with physically separated processing nodes, the system’s connected array structure is the source of its robustness. In the current state of forced semi-autonomy, a remarkable simulacrum has emerged: diverse, ad hoc adaptations—academia fragmented, distributed research, bottom-up fabrication—that demonstrate the resilience and ingenuity of the computational design community in the face of crisis.
With this reality as a point of departure, Distributed Proximities invites contributions of recent and emerging work in computational design innovation and culture. In addition to completed research, this year we encourage the submission of work that is in-process, behind-the-scenes, recently initiated, and in-formation.
ACADIA 2020 will be an entirely virtual event, featuring peer-reviewed, juried, and curated content, published proceedings, as well as live discussions and activities that aim to radically open up the conversation around computational design and its critical dialogues.
Bio: Adam Marcus
Adam Marcus is a licensed and registered architect and educator. He directs Variable Projects, an independent architecture practice in Oakland, and he is a partner in Futures North, a Minneapolis-based public art collaborative dedicated to exploring the aesthetics of data. Adam is an Associate Professor of Architecture at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he teaches design studios in computational design and digital fabrication, co-directs the Architectural Ecologies Lab, and collaborates with CCA’s Digital Craft Lab. From 2011 to 2013, Adam was Cass Gilbert Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota School of Architecture, where he chaired the symposium “Digital Provocations: Emerging Computational Approaches to Pedagogy & Practice.” He has also taught at Columbia University and the Architectural Association’s Visiting School Los Angeles. Adam is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.