 Welcome everyone, this is the formal presentation of the computational design practices program. As you all know, this is only the second year, you will be the second cohort of this program, and we're very excited. You know set has been doing an amazing job with the first cohort of students and our final review is on April 26 so watch out for the sort of final products that emerge. So, just so you know the program is in the graduate school of architecture planning and preservation, this is every hall. You will be named to really faster a studio culture, and you will be in classes with students across, except for the colloquium classes and your required classes. You will be joined together in all your classes with students from the architecture school, but the architecture program, the urban planning program the urban design program, the conceptual curatorial conceptual critical curatorial practices program and historic preservation right so it's a really nice culture of exchange amongst all these students, these students mostly in your elective classes. So, in terms of our mission and curriculum. You know, we really, and we say this over and over again, even when you come into the program that this is a technical critical and creative program that allows people not only the chance to master an array of computational approaches to the built environment, but also we strongly believe a pathway to transform these approaches and the world in which we live. So, what you see in the background over here is work of the current students, but we really aim that our program introduces a different concept and pedagogy for an integrated and multi dimensional spatial approach to computational design at GSAP right so it's very particular you might come from computational science or computer science or engineering and another field, but we really strongly embed all our work in the built environment. So we also aim to be an intervention oriented pedagogy so it's a kind of applied learning for emerging designers and thinkers. And we stress that the tools data and technology we deploy on never ever and never ever neutral in the design process and we learn how to evaluate those tools and that data as a background in terms of what we're doing. We encourage this kind of critical and creative engagement, both as method and as practice, and we foster a studio environment in which students work alongside all kinds of other students within the GSAP culture. We aim for high impact work from students, focusing on pressing issues of public concern related to architecture in the built environment, its present and its future so we do a lot of exercises in world building and thinking through the present in relation to the future. So, with the full knowledge that architectural design and planning. In the in terms of the way computational design has been approached has definitely had both positive and negative effects on the built environment, those have become clearer and clearer in the last decade. So, although computation is addressed in other programs at the school and university. The computational design practices program is the first that connects computational methods to spatial design analysis visualization fabrication and research through a project based pedagogy directed at architecture and the built environment across multiple scales of engagement. So as you've just heard in your own introductions, the CDP students are a mix of designers and architects interested in computation and technologists interested in design and the built environment. So, what I'm going to do now is a very quick curriculum overview that goes from the online program which is basically in June or from whether whenever you accept your admission into the program. The summer is the second half of the summer semester, very intensive six to seven week curriculum. The full semester is a full semester and then the spring semester and then you graduate. So, we start with a colloquium. Then there's a foundation of seven courses with three of which are are online and zero credit so there's really the three colloquium and the four foundational seminars which are the required parts of the curriculum. And then there are a number of electives and I'm going to go through each of those in detail. So, let's start with the foundation. Okay, and beginning with these three online classes. So this this three of them in total computational drawing programming for design practices and mapping and data, and those are those are fully online. So, part of a series of tutorials that are open to the world open across the whole across the whole of GSAP, and they facilitate a basic data literacy and programming languages for spatial concept offered in a coherent manner with project based examples for spatial analysis and design. So, although you might know these from, you know, computer science or from engineering. The examples that we provide here are always to do with the built environment. The set of tutorials is specifically written with our own pedagogical approach in mind. And we've also gathered vetted and curated tutorials and resources that are already online and you know, there's a plethora of those and on the internet. So, we've called this online program the smorgasbord, you get, you take little bits and bytes of the course of June. And each with each admitted student I have a zoom session, and based on your background, decide which of the courses, which of these tutorials you should take before entering before entering the program. So, the whole truthfulness. Two of the students took every single one of the tutorials and did it while doing a full time job. These are not, you know, overly difficult at all, but they really allow you to hit the ground running when you enter the program in July. Okay, so that smorgasbord and we will put the link in the chat in after after this is over comprises of five different modules computational drawing for those who have no architecture background at all it shows you how to model a building in three dimensions and to draw plans sections of anything not only buildings but products, etc. Then there's programming for design practices, which has three components. One is for grasshopper, which is tools for spatial design. One is programming for design practices in Python. So we think of data as a spatial code. The third is web development development and again we think of websites as a form of spatial design. And then the fifth component is mapping and data and it's a very broad introduction to QGIS or QGIS whatever you want to call it, and a little bit of data analysis and Okay, so the next thing I'm going to talk about are the three colloquiums which is really the heart and soul of our program. These are the classes where you're only in a class with your own cohort. And here they are sort of spelled out a little bit right so the first summer colloquium is called methods as practice practices methods. It focuses on defining what computation means for the built environment, and what are its methods practices and particularly its politics. So we do a survey of tools and modes of practice historical and future models, and the end product is a series of position papers or probes using specific softwares a goal for you is to come out of this colloquium. I think what you want to do as a thesis or capstone project, but what methods you're most interested in exploring and developing right because there's a lot of different tracks that you can take within this program. So, the second semester, which I teach, along with snow areas on who's currently a computational designer at Google delve. We ask over here what kinds of projects do we want to create what futures and world views do they make possible. And within that students have to select the tools data project collaborators and advisors that they're going to work with in the spring. And the end product is a project proposal, and we take you through the steps of making that project proposal and introduce you to a number of readings which are part of the way that we conceptualize the orientation of the program. So the third semester is called design in action, and it is here that you actually, you know produce your final project for the for the year by combining scales methods disciplines and perspectives. We ask what kind of spatial practices will emerge, and how can we put them into action as theory research entrepreneurship creative technology activism or anything that you might choose right. So in action means you can create a conversation around your work in terms of a debate, you can make a proposal that you pitch to various people to, you know, to have it implemented, or you can produce a website you can produce a piece of data journalism narratives, you can conduct a lot of fields field work, but the main thing is that you're not doing it separate from the practice in which you think you want to engage with once you leave the program. Right. So, over here, the students have already chosen the advisors in the in the fall semester and so they speak to these advisors once a week. And then Seth Thompson has been doing desks with the students as well every week so you really are it's a very hands on program. You have a lot of advice and advising and the colloquiums are run like a studio environment right so you have one on one desks with your instructors. So after that, we have the foundational courses. The online foundation I've already described, then their four classes, one is called computational modeling. The other is computational design workflows, and the third is mapping systems, these are in the summer intensive. And then we introduce you to the various kinds of projects that you might want to engage in when you once you graduate, and the third and the, and then the fourth which is in the fall semester is design intelligence. We have a tiny bit of detail about what these courses in trail computational modeling is advanced parametrics and scripting and custom workflows computational and you do a lot of computational urbanism over there. computational design workflows is advanced Python tool building custom workflows and web visualization and JavaScript. You are very familiar with these kinds of languages you can wave this class, and then mapping systems over here we don't do design oriented GIS we do that in the fall semester. So here we're going to be introducing students to mapping in Jupyter notebooks, which is a much less visual interface, handling of vector and raster data geospatial data and Python, and mapping and data is in Python and the creation of interactive web maps. And then in the fall semester design intelligence, we use algorithms in design advanced statistics introduction to machine learning for design practices and intro to optimization for design practices and again this course is is taught at a number of scales. So you might be interested the person who's doing facade studies might be interested in doing the architectural scale, while other students might be interested in the more product design scale like a sensor oriented project or a much larger scale and urban scale. So from there, you have, you know, each semester, you're responsible to take a between 15 and 18 credits, the colloquium class is six credits. And required classes three credits so you have another two or three classes to choose from in the fall or the spring. And there are a lot of classes to choose from in relation to what you think that you might focus on in your capstone or thesis. Right, so we have a lot of computational design classes at G seven fact this program grew out of the visual studies curriculum which I have been coordinating for quite a number of years. And over here, we, again, Adam and I have meetings with you to think okay, if your capstone project you want to work with sensors, what are the classes over here that mostly will teach you more skills in those methods. But you also might want to take a history class on the long history of architectural technology, or you might want to take a class that I teach conflict urbanism, or that it manual at master teachers immeasurable sites which is very critical of the uses of computation and design. So as you can see here, there are a lot of methods, you know from urban urban analytics which are offered in the in the urban planning program. A lot of our students have taken intro to data informatics for example, or the future mobility workshop which is taught by Anthony who is a very good friend of our program. You can also take more human computer interaction types of classes like medical and physical computation, or you could focus on the more virtual aspects of virtual architecture and mix methods and virtual reality. So there are a lot of options and we are there to sort of help you navigate all the choices. Okay, so in terms of sort of the overview to how we think of ourselves this is the grid, which we have created to orient our students. And you might come from a completely technical background, but you have not thought about computation in relation to the built environment. Or you come from an absolute humanities base and you have very little programming, right and you might just have had an undergrad in our in our urban studies. And we try to bring everybody into this third into this top right quadrant, so that we are always talking about critical computation, activism, creative computation and entrepreneurship and any combination of those things are absolutely acceptable within our program. So we think of ourselves as both a computational curriculum for students to develop a technical foundation and a project based learning curriculum designed for students to develop a critical approach to computation in the context of the built environment. So here's an example of a curriculum this is for a full time student, at least 15 credits per semester but you can take up to 19 credits. So you see, you take all the required classes, and this person has taken data visualization and spatial UX in the full semester technology and architecture generative design and urban mobility in the second semester. We also have part time students who have, who have been accepted and have accepted into into the program. Those students do a two year cycle. And what we encourage is that you do all your electives in your first year and the colloquium in your second year. We have four students this year who are part time students and I'm happy to put you in touch with any of them if you're an accepted part time student. Right. And so then this is your second year where you do the colloquium, and you might do one of the, you know, you might do a third one of the summer seminars that year as well. This year, most of the part time students did all the summer seminars in the summer, and all the electives during the fall and spring are not only going to do the three colloquia but there's other ways of doing it. Okay, so here are our faculty. We have a variety of full time faculty who are engaged in the program this year, David Benjamin and Lola Ben-Anlon advising particular students. Anthony Vankie a lot of students took his classes. And then we have an array of the majoring adjunct faculty who are practitioners in the field of computational design and Seth will introduce himself a little later on, and hopefully some other of our faculty have joined this session as we've been talking. So here is what your summer will look like in terms of the faculty methods as the first colloquium is going to be taught by Violet Whitney and Alan William Martin. They both have very deep engagement in computational design in current practices. Luke Wilson is going to be teaching computational modeling, and he works. He runs a research unit within a large corporate office called KPF, and is very skilled in parametric urbanism. The computational design workflows is taught by Celeste Lane. She is part of the group architect keys. She has a degree in urban planning and has a background in computer science as well. And she's amazing instructor and mapping systems is being taught by Carlo Bailey, who has a very deep background in data science and also is a graduate of the masters in architecture school. So here's a picture of the end of our summer semester. This is the current cohort of students. You can see over there Violet and Celeste and Luke, and I think Dan Tae Young, and our whole first cohort. And as you can see over here they come from many, many different backgrounds so they came from architectural design, computer graphics, computer science, this is what we asked them on the first day what disciplines or practices do you have experience in. So, you know, we were very proud this year that we really did practice what we preached and, and we, this combination of disciplines the students really do fuster, and they haven't actually collaborated with each other this year perhaps next year they will. But they really are an amazing group they help each other they exchange tutorials they exchange all kinds of information and there's a very nice atmosphere in the in the group. Here's some of the work that they did last summer. Last summer we did responsive architecture which is now moving into the fall to an elective the spatial UX because a lot of students really wanted mapping systems as part of the summer semester. This is part of the computational design workflows class. And, as you can see, a lot of diversity in the approaches to how to put various things together. This is from the computational modeling class that Luke Wilson teaches. And here is our final review from the summer. And here you see snow areas on Anthony Vankie Dan Tiong and Celeste lean. Here are some of the projects that came out of the colloquium. The full semester explore explain propose where we took some of this work. But most people as, as I said, chose the methods and then through a seminar really developed their own approach to their thesis and capstone. This is one of the work that came out of that semester. So this is George for gazey who is doing blockchain GPS project, very innovative and entrepreneurial. This is the work of Lucia, Rabilino who thesis project is looking at a tiny little place in the spectrum where cell phones interfere with the weather satellites. And here is the work of Shang Xi, who is looking at how the EB 35 visa program has induced all kinds of development in New York, and he's evaluating that. And he's modeling Zang's one of his projects for a particular seminar. This is taught by Gal Nism animals environments animals and technologies. This is an amazing seminar which engages with sensors and concepts and ideas which bring together the sensors to the sensors to analyze ways in which animals technologies and humans come together. This is the result of the data visualization seminar which is taught by Jia Zhang she was working in the Center for spatial research for around four years and now is part of an amazing group at Microsoft where they do experiments in data visualization. This always comes out of that seminar. And here is the midterm results of design in action. At the midterm, you are invited to submit a proposal to travel somewhere to do anything to help your thesis or capstone. You submit the proposal, I can't remember just a few weeks before the spring break. And here our students decided to go to SXSW in Austin in Texas. One of the students went to Florida to look at a farm because her project is about food networks in Chinatown. Some went to Miami, some went to CERN in Geneva. Really it's very open ended and you can apply for up to $2,000. This is the work of Sara Lee Satagarun and she is doing an amazing clock for her for her final project and a clock that really asks questions about time and presents alternatives to the ways that we divide up 24 hour days. And this is the work of Eddie Joe Antonio who is analyzing the link NYC network across New York which is a public wifi system and his work incorporates everything from ethnographic research to a critical evaluation of how these public wifi systems work in terms of both surveillance and advertising and the more insidious parts of this network. And he's not quite finished yet but and this is the work of Zoe Lin who is doing her project on food networks in Chinatown and she's gone back into Google Street View to look at the changes in that system from 2005 until now. This is Dan Tae Young's meditool class where he really rethinks human computer interaction in a much more collaborative way rather than just one to one and amazing work always comes out of that seminar too. And here is Adam Vosberg's seminar methods in spatial research, and a lot of our students took this class in relation to other seminars which are offered at GSAP, so that you can produce maths in relation to this specific subject matter for example my own class conflict urbanism but this other classes. So really that's the overview. And, you know, really we, you can add other words to this series of words but if you're interested in computation in this program we imagine that you could approach it through activism through algorithms and social justice, creative technology, data visualization, design justice, digital public infrastructure, entrepreneurship, just technologies, new materials, and, you know, public interest technology and all the other words over here. Someone just added feminist technology the other day in our conversations. So it's really endless. And it's up to you to define what it is that you will focus on. And that is the end of the introduction.