Elizabeth Diller and Mario Carpo Confirmed as ACADIA 2016 Keynote Speakers

Elizabeth Diller and Mario Carpo Confirmed as ACADIA 2016 Keynote Speakers

Elizabeth Diller and Mario Carpo have been confirmed as keynote speakers for the ACADIA 2016 to be held at the University of Michigan from October 27 – 29, 2016 and hosted by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Excitement around the event is brewing, as evidenced by a recent post on the Architect’s Newspaper.

The ACADIA 2016 conference, themed Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers & Cognitive Machines, will focus design work and research from the worlds of practice and academia that lie at the intersection between procedural design, designed environments and autonomous machines. More specifically, this conference will seek to explore recent work within the current trend in computational design to develop and apply quasi-cognitive machines; the integration of software, information, fabrication and sensing to generate mechanisms for interfacing with the physical realm.

Elizabeth Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an interdisciplinary design studio that spans the fields of architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. With Ricardo Scofidio, Ms. Diller was the first in the field of architecture to receive the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award; the jury stated, “their work explores how space functions in our culture and illustrates that architecture, when understood as the physical manifestation of social relationships, is everywhere, not just in buildings.”

Among the studio’s civic and cultural projects are the High Line and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Redevelopment in New York, The Broad in Los Angeles, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, and the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University. Projects nearing completion include the Museum of Image & Sound in Rio de Janeiro and the Columbia University Medical and Graduate Education Building. Ms. Diller currently is leading the design of the U.S. Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) expansion in New York. Ms. Diller’s studio has completed numerous conceptual and experimental works, including Blur, a pavilion made of fog for the 2002 Swiss Expo, and Exit, an immersive multi-media installation at the Palais de Tokyo, as well as Musings on a Glass Box for the Fondation Cartier and Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. DS+R was the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003.

Ms. Diller is recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Design, and the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2009, Ms. Diller was selected by Time magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Elizabeth Diller graduated from the Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1979 and taught at the school from 1981-1990. She is currently Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.

Mario Carpo is Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural Theory and History, at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London. Mr. Carpo’s research and publications focus on the relationship among architectural theory, cultural history, and the history of media and information technology. His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001) has been translated into several languages. His most recent books are The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011; also translated into other languages); and The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012 (Wiley, 2012). Mr. Carpo’s recent essays and articles have been published in Log, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Grey Room, L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, Arquitectura Viva, AD/Architectural Design, Perspecta, Harvard Design Magazine, Cornell Journal of Architecture, Abitare, Lotus International, Domus, Artforum, and Arch+.

After studying architecture and history in Italy, Dr. Carpo was an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and in 1993 received tenure in France, where he was first assigned to the École d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne, then to the École d’Architecture de Paris-La Villette. He was the Head of the Study Centre at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal from 2002 to 2006, and Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Yale School of Architecture from 2010 to 2014.

A team of Taubman College faculty is currently working to shape the conference. Involved faculty include Site Chair Geoffrey Thün, Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice; Technical Chairs Assistant Professor Sean Ahlquist, Associate Professor Matias del Campo and Associate Professor Kathy Velikov; Workshop Chairs Assistant Professor Wes McGee, Assistant Professor Catie Newell; and Exhibition Chair Sandra Manninger, Assistant Professor of Practice in Architecture.