Announcement: InclusiveFUTURES


New Website: www.DigitalFUTURES.world

DigitalFUTURES is pleased to announce the launch of InclusiveFUTURES, an entirely free festival of events for architects and students around the globe. InclusiveFUTURES will bring together some of the most talented architects and educators for the largest ever online celebration of computation and architectural design. The highlight of InclusiveFUTURES will be a series of over 100 workshops offered in several different languages, but the festival will also include a lecture series, international conference and series of exhibitions. 


Background

12 months ago we launched DigitalFUTURES World, an online festival of free architectural workshops and talks. At the height of the pandemic, we called upon architects and instructors around the world to come together in a spirit of solidarity for the benefit of students across the globe. The result was an outstanding success. We hosted 80 different workshops and 50 talks, and received over 12,000 applications from across the globe. 

With DigitalFUTURES World we felt that we had managed to break through the walls of the classroom, and opened up an extraordinary new domain where educational ideas could be disseminated for free. Moreover, we realised that we could use our online platform to reach students in even the most economically underprivileged parts of the world. 


Democratizing Education

This year, however, we want to push these ideas even further. We want to be even more inclusive. We want to reach out even further. We want to embrace communities in Africa, South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. and host workshops not only in English, but also in several other languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Bangla and Bahasa Indonesian. 

Architectural education, we believe, needs to be democratized. In our opinion, education should be a human right, and not a privilege of the wealthy. We have therefore called upon that same spirit of solidarity, and invited architects and instructors once more to donate their time and knowledge for the sake of those in less privileged countries. 

Importantly, everything will be free.

The result is InclusiveFUTURES, the largest ever festival of computation and architectural design.


The highlight of InclusiveFUTURES will be a series of 100+ International Workshops taking place from 27 June to 3 July. InclusiveFUTURES will begin, however, on 12 June with a series of lectures for the Digital Consortium. There will also be an International Conference, and an Opening Ceremony and Closing Ceremony for the International Workshops.


International Workshops

The InclusiveFUTURES International Workshops will consist of a series of over 100 international workshops, operating in several different languages. The workshops will be hosted online on Zoom, and live-streamed on YouTube and Bilibili. There will also be a few hybrid online-offline workshops with fabrication taking place in Shanghai, China and Cairo, Egypt. There will also be one in person workshop in Miami, Florida. The work produced in these workshops will be exhibited in a series of online and offline exhibitions.

The workshops will address topics including AI, AR/VR, Bio Design, Computational Design, Data Visualization, Interaction Design, Material Studies, Performative Design, Fabrication, Theory, Urban Design, Space Architecture, Design Fictions, Neuro Design and, of course, Inclusivity itself. They will be held in the following languages, English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Farsi, Turkish, Bangla and Bahasi Indonesian.

Many leading institutions and schools of architecture will take part, including the AA, UCL Bartlett, UCambridge, NewcastleU, ETHZürich, ICDStuttgart, IaaC, UIC, TUDelft, CITA, TUMunich, Aarhus, AaltoU, TallinnU, AIT, UIBK, UCLouvain, Strelka, Digitocene, IMA, UChile, UCAL, UTFSM, PBoliviriana, Di Tella, La Plata, FUParaiba, UBA, UNR, UNC, Unicamp, USP, FAAP, UFMG, UFMS, UFBA, UFRJ, UFP, FUSC, PUC, AUC, AUS, UTehran, Futurly, BAU, SPA, CAA, BSSA, ITB, RatLAB, UBangladesh, AIUB, RMIT, Swinburne, Tsinghua, Southeastern, Tongji, HIT, Nanjing, XJTLU, WKean, HKU, SUTD, CCA, Waterloo, TdMonterrey, SCI-Arc, MIT, Harvard, UCLA, UPenn, PennState, UVA, UMichigan, Pratt, NYIT, Syracuse, Clemson, TexasA&M, UCSB, CalPoly, UNMexico, LawrenceTU, CSULB, SJSU, WashingtonSU, FIU,  FAU, ANFA, NEUROARQ, DataForm, together with leading software developers, such as McNeel, ESRI, Metrodata, and Xkool, and several architectural practices, including Zaha Hadid Architects.

The InclusiveFUTURES workshops will begin with the Opening Ceremony on 26 June 2021, and end with the Closing Ceremony on 3 July 2021. Both ceremonies will include a number of award ceremonies and keynote lectures. This year two new awards will be made, the Mark Cousins Award for Theory and the InclusiveFUTURES Award for Architectural Design.



Lecture Series

The lecture series will start on 12 June and will be the first event in InclusiveFUTURES. It will form part of the Digital Consortium, a new shared platform for doctoral students. The principle behind the Digital Consortium is that it no longer makes sense to have individual professors in individual classrooms teaching individual groups of students, now that we can all connect online on a single online platform. 

The Digital Consortium is not intended as an exclusive club for elite institutions, but rather as an inclusive platform for doctoral students worldwide. The Digital Consortium aims to bring you the very best experts in the world, and to establish an online platform for discussion where everyone can come together and debate ideas. 

The first lecture in the series will be given by celebrated Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, one of the most famous public intellectuals in the world today. Subsequent lectures will be given by leading philosophers, architectural theorists, and computational experts, including Sanford Kwinter, Manuel DeLanda, Erin Manning, Patrik Schumacher, Ana Maria Duran Calisto, Neil Leach, Philip Yuan, Achim Menges, Mike Xie, Roland Snooks, Mette Thomsen, Masoud Akbarzabeh, and Philippe Block. 

 

1. Reality as Materialized Ideology

Inaugural lecture by Slavoj Zizek

12 June 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China 


2. Architecture + Philosophy 

Lectures by Erin Manning, Manuel DeLanda, Sanford Kwinter, Patrik Schumacher, Ana Maria, Duran Calisto and Neil Leach

13 - 18 June 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China 


3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence 

Lecture on the theory of AI by Neil Leach with invited guests including Refik Anadol, Wanyu He, Theodore Galanos and Daniel Bolojan

12 - 17 June 9.00pm EDT / 3.00am CET (+ 1 day) / 9.00 am China (+ 1 day)


4. Performance Based Digital Design Methodologies 

Lectures by Achim Menges, Mette Thomsen, Philip Yuan, Philippe Block, Masoud Akbarzabeh, and others

19 - 24 June 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China 

Lectures by Roland Snooks, Mike Xie and others 

19 - 24 June 8.00am EDT / 2.00pm CET / 8.00pm China


Doctoral students may apply to join the Zoom platform through the DigitalFUTURES website. All others may follow the live-stream on YouTube and Bilibili. 

https://youtube.com/digitalfuturesworld/live; https://live.bilibili.com/22290623

These lectures are organised by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, as part of the DigitalFUTURES International Doctoral Program.

 

International Conference

On 25 June InclusiveFUTURES will be hosting ‘Material Intelligence,’ the 3rd DigitalFUTURES International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication (CDRF 2021), an international conference of peer-reviewed papers addressing a range of topics, including Computation and Formation, Simulation and Optimization, Data Acquisition and Prediction, Perception and Interaction, Materialization and Construction.

The proceedings will be published by Springer. For information about past years’ Springer publications visit CDRF 2019 & CDRF 2020



InclusiveFUTURES Schedule

Workshop Registration Opens

23 May, 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China


Workshop Registration Closes

31 May, 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China


Digital Consortium Lectures

12 June - 24 June, 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China 


CDRF Material Intelligence Conference

26 June


Workshop Opening Ceremony

26 June, 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China 

With special invited guests


InclusiveFUTURES Workshops 

27 June - 3 July (start times may vary)


Workshop Closing Ceremony

4 July, 10:00am EDT / 4:00pm CET / 10:00pm China 

With special invited guests and awards ceremonies


Download press info here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0w6b5fw9ywcoo1w/AADALhi2N_ydiiuSESvpHXwea?dl=0