Voices in Design Computing

Derek Ham has taught design in a variety of contexts: architecture, graphic design, industrial design, computer animation, game design, and more. In each of these disciplines, Ham introduces play as an informal learning method to teach design. For Ham, play is an algorithmic framework for teaching creativity in design – one that has a foundation in shape grammars and allows us to think of designs as the outcomes of playful calculation. Ham is currently the department head of art and design, associate professor of graphic design and affiliated assistant research professor of architecture at North Carolina State University. In addition, he founded Logic Grip, an NC State official startup spun out of the College of Design’s Mixed Reality Lab (MxRLab). Before joining the faculty of the College of Design at NC State, he taught at the MIT School of Architecture, Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and the Rhode Island School of Design. Ham's research interests span the areas of game-based learning, algorithmic thinking, and digital fabrication/making. In his current work, he investigates both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality technology to find ways these tools can expand the possibilities of interaction design toward new forms of storytelling and scholarship. In 2017, Ham began creating an immersive VR experience of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike during the Civil Rights Movement. The I Am A Man VR Experience was released in 2018 (the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination), allowing a first-hand experience of a pivotal moment in American history. The project was funded by Oculus and earned numerous film festival awards. A second project, Barnstormers: Determined to Win, is a forthcoming interactive VR experience of historical fiction providing an interactive narrative of the stories of players in the Negro Baseball League, such as Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Buck O’Neil. +++more on Derek’s work: Logic Grip I Am A Man Mixed Reality Lab at NC State +++links to resources discussed in the episode: Forming Spatial Narratives lecture at MIT The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schön

Shelby Doyle, AIA is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Stan G. Thurston Professor of Design Build at the Iowa State University College of Design and co-founder of the ISU Computation & Construction Lab (CCL) and director of the ISU Architectural Robotics Lab (ARL). The CCL and ARL the result of Doyle's ISU Presidential Impact Hire to rethink digital fabrication and design-build. The CCL works to connect developments in computation to the challenges of construction: through teaching, research, and outreach.  The central hypothesis of CCL and Doyle's work is that computation in architecture is a material, pedagogical, and social project; computation is both informed by and productive of architectural cultures. This hypothesis is explored, through the fabrication of built projects and materialized in computational practices. The CCL is invested in questioning the role of education and pedagogy in replicating existing technological inequities, and in pursuing the potential for technology in architecture as a space of and for gender equity.

Huiwon Lim is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Penn State University. He previously served as a lecturer at Iowa State University, which is where he earned his M.F.A. in Graphic Design, a graduate certificate in human-computer interaction, and a master’s degree in environmental graphic design. Lim's interests lie in visual communications, environmental graphic design, brand experience, human-computer interaction, user experience design, visualizing information, and exhibition design. During his time in Ames, Iowa, Lim taught undergraduate courses in graphic design, core design, and interdisciplinary design. He was also named a recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award at Iowa State in 2017. As a student, he won the Best of Category, Environmental Graphic Design Award at the 58th Annual Art Director’s Association of Iowa Design Exhibition in 2016. Lim is a member of AIGA and the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. A native of Gunsan, Korea, Lim has a bachelor’s degree in art and engineering from the Handong Global University in Pohang, Korea. +++more on Huiwon's work: hewantsdesign.com

Karla Saldaña Ochoa is an Ecuadorian architect with a Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture from ETH Zurich. In June 2021, she finished her Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, which investigated the integration of Artificial and Human Intelligence to have a precise and agile response to natural disasters. Since August 2021, Karla is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida; her teaching and research focus on investigating the interplay of Artificial and Human Intelligence in architectural practices at building and urban scale. Karla is the leading researcher at SHARE Lab, a research group focused on developing human-centered AI projects on design practices. The acronym SHARE stands for Spatial Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Research & Experimentation. The research of the lab focuses on the relationship between human and artificial intelligence, knowing that one complements the other, with AI being able to augment human physical and intellectual capabilities. SHARE Lab work aims to address the following question: how architects might include such technologies in a design workflow while preserving their role as a creative entity? +++more on Karla's work: www.ai-share-lab.com +++links to resources mentioned in the episode: On Defining Artificial Intelligence Beyond typologies, beyond optimization: Exploring novel structural forms at the interface of human and machine intelligence. Atlas of AI. ///episode artwork details: Beyond, courtesy of SHARE lab. +++for more info on the podcast: https://sites.psu.edu/voicesindesigncomputing/

Felecia Davis’ work in computational textiles questions how we live and she re-imagines how we might use textiles in our daily lives and in architecture. Davis is interested in developing computational methods and design in relation to specific bodies in specific places engaging specific social, cultural and political constructions. Davis is an Associate Professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing in the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and is the director of SOFTLAB@PSU. She completed her PhD in Design Computation at MIT. Davis’ work in architecture connects art, science, engineering and design and was featured by PBS in the Women in Science Profiles series. Davis’ work was part of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Reconstruction: Blackness and Architecture in America. She is a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective a not-for-profit group of Black architects, scholars and artists supporting design work about the Black diaspora. Davis is also principal in her own design firm, FELECIADAVISTUDIO where the firm has received several finalist awards for her architectural designs in open and invited design competitions.     +++for more on Felecia's workInstagram: @fadometer Instagram: @blackreconstructioncollectivehttp://www.feleciadavistudio.com/https://www.blackreconstructioncollective.org/ ///episode artwork details Black Flower Antenna, © Felecia DavisProduced for the Museum of Modern Art, 2020.Team: Farzaneh Oghazian, PhD Candidate, Stuckeman Center for Design Computing (SCDC), Berfin Evrim, MSci. SCDC, 2019, Thomas Dimick, B.Arch 2020, Niousha Keyvani, M.Arch. 2022, Ciera Jones, March. 2023, Elliot Brau, March. 2023, Jamie Heilman, Digifab Lab, Allan Sutley and Steven White Sr. Stuckeman Shop. Team outside Penn State: Erin Lewis, PhD Candidate The Swedish School of Textiles and Leah Resnick, North Carolina State Knitting Lab. +++for more info on the podcast https://sites.psu.edu/voicesindesigncomputing/