 So Laura, thank you for taking the time to speak today. I'm excited about, you know, what you've done, both in your capacity as the Director of Center of Spatial Research, but more importantly for this conversation today as a Director of the Visual Study Sequence for the MRC and AAD program. You know, I think GSAP has really led the way in terms of how we teach visual studies, what representation means and, you know, kind of thinking about tools, skills, but also kind of critical engagement with these tools and skills and you've kind of reframed those questions. So I wanted to hear a little bit about that history and how we're moving forward in some of the recent changes that we've made in ADR2, thinking about new languages, et cetera. Great. So there's two aspects of the visual studies curriculum. The first are the core classes, ADR1 and ADR2, which all the MR students take. And that in itself is unique because we begin the visual study sequence with a digital class and we teach students how to design buildings digitally with digital tools, but not just, you know, not just that it's a digital tools class, but that it's how to think about buildings and how to draw buildings and then how to communicate buildings in both a static and a dynamic way. So while we teach students the skills of plans and sections and how that has really changed in a digital environment, we end that curriculum in that particular class with an animation and thinking about the dynamic nature of buildings and space and time and how to communicate all of that. ADR2 this semester is positioned very uniquely, although it's always been positioned uniquely because we go a little bit backwards from digital tools and we really try and think about what tools we use as architects and how that helps us to conceptualize the spaces that we're designing at all. So we acknowledge from the get go that these tools are not neutral and that various professors and various students have very different ways of using tools in their creative process. So this semester we've taken that even further and we've really asked both the professors and students to think about how the built environment is coded and coded meaning how the built environment is built through code and rules and legal structures. We inhabit space in a coded way. I know how to behave when I'm sitting in front of the screen. You know how to behave when you're sitting at a dining room table, you know how to behave when you're sitting at a dining room table with those kinds of things, but that code is also a creative technology and we're trying to demystify the high-tech nature of code and really think about it in terms of our creative process from very poetic in very poetic ways to very technical ways. So ADR2 really takes into account that all architecture students have digital tools and analog tools in the way that they work and create from using a pencil to a 3D printer and what are the ways in which we assemble what we call workflows from the beginning of the design process to the very end of how we present ourselves to the world as architects and the kinds of tools that are engaged in our very unique practices. Brand new and the students are really engaged with it and the teachers are also really inventing as they go along. It's a brand new course at GSAP. So then after the core, what's also unique to our program is that we have a range of visual studies, workshops and classes which build on this core. We don't have to have taken the first two classes if you're in the AAD program or even urban design program but these workshops actually engage the whole school from across our disciplines from planning to urban design to advanced architecture and beyond and so some of them build on the uniqueness of ADR2 so courses like data mining the city or meta tool or generative design to build on these coding structures but then we have another range of classes like lines to splines or photography or how to hand draw in a digital space on top of a model that you've built. So more analog processes within the design, within a design spectrum and then also we do classes in augmented reality but not just rethinking what is gravity in a virtual space or how do you play in a virtual environment? So very much critical of the technology itself but saying we don't abandon technology. How do we deploy these things for new practices? And then above that we also do mapping and data visualization and narratives that you can storytelling that you create within a data environment even in terms of making collaborations with journalists. So what can architecture bring to the journalism profession as there's many ways in which our knowledge of the built environment can be brought to other disciplines and so the important thing about all of this is that these classes really work across scales and they knit together the environment at GSAP into a very unique series of classes that bring together design, visualization, representation, analysis and new practices at a variety of scales pushing the discipline forward into a very unknown future as we can say sitting at our zoom terminals today. What's very interesting and exciting for me in terms of what I've is that you and the visual studies faculty and team you're always on the kind of cutting edge. The first we're launching this kind of weekly broadcasts and open courses now in light of the COVID-19 crisis and the fact that we're all dispersed and already the team has figured out how do we present digitally, how do we collaborate through Zoom, how do we undo this platform and use it in a more creative way and I think that sense of always being kind of on the lookout for where architectural thinking, creativity, design can transform our sharing and collaborations. So I thought maybe you could hint a little bit at that given that in this space that we're in, how do we bring that intelligence to bear upon these questions. It's very exciting. I think that we're, as we speak, we're trying to figure out ways that we can actually overcome this idea of social distance and say it's not social distance that we're dealing with right now, it's physical distance. There was a really great article written by Eric Kleinberg an opinion piece in the New York Times which I thought was so hugely important because as we understand that we're all trying to flatten the curve and create a sense of social distance, that social distance is in fact physical distance and perhaps there is a way to go back to the utopianism of this digital space to try and bring ourselves together at this critical moment to try and have real conversations in as much as possible and I think there's ways of creating small networks and small discussion spaces. That's what a lot of the visual studies faculty have tried to do and have come up with really unique ways of organizing this digital space to make it really accessible to students as they are engaged in this very disoriented moment. Yeah, I don't know how to finish that sentence. It's ongoing and that's the point is that it's ongoing and we're always on the front line to think about how we can kind of turn our tools upside down or our constraints as architects and turn them into opportunities for new forms of creativity, collaboration, new forms of practice. Certainly you have really pioneered kind of very hybrid and expanded form of practice and so I'm excited to see what comes out of this semester in light of both the transformation, ongoing sort of transformation of the visual studies sequence but also in light of the current crisis and I have no doubt that it will be quite inspiring and we'll be able to share that soon with our incoming class as well. Thank you, Laura, for kind of leading all these ideas and I hope to see you physically in person soon. Me too, very soon.