eghub Lecture "Digital dialogues: Computational design from promise to practice" by Ms Nicole GARDNER (UNSW)

eghub Lecture
“Digital dialogues: Computational design from promise to practice” 
by Ms Nicole GARDNER, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (UNSW)

[Topic]
In the computation design paradigm, scholars such as Sheil (2005, 2006, 2008), Menges (2015, 2016), and Scheurer (2014) assert that computational methods are realising a valuable new close- ness between design thinking and the material realm. From this perspective, the CAD/CAM confluence produces the designer-as-maker, and ‘modelling’ and ‘model-making’ assume a new significance. Phrases such as design-to-manufacture, file-to-fabrication, and cyber-physical making systems describe—as much as promote—a drawing together of formerly separable realms of expertise into an interdependent system. This raises important questions about hybrid design practices, and the knowledge required to operate effectively within these new design systems or ‘workflows’ that shift between scales and where materialization becomes an active design-driver. These issues bring into focus the necessity for experimentation, research, and critical reflection in ways that also engage industry. This is addressed across a range of subjects in the Bachelor of Computational Design (CoDe) in the Built Environment Faculty at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. This lecture outlines the pedagogical aims of the CoDe degree and profiles a range of CoDe Research (CoDeR) projects undertaken since 2014 that employ action- based methods to work within and between various cyber-physical scales and tactilities.