38th ECAADE Conference, Berlin

Humans and technology today form an inseparable link that have profound implications for Earth’s ecosystems – leading to the debate for a new era: the Anthropologic. In recent years, the transition from analog to digital architecture has materialized through increasing availability of novel software and new methods in digital architecture fabrication – tooling. The cognitive and digital turn implies ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and material intelligence, but to mention a few. The resulting design strategies overwhelm our discipline of architecture, encouraging a re-thinking of architecture, the architect’s role and responsibility, as well as architectural education. The development of digital technologies is compounding the need to develop ethics for this new technological state – shifting computer architecture from its focus on technology to a focus on humans.

Objectives: The theme “Anthropologic – Architecture and Fabrication in the cognitive age … from smart to behavioral … from digital to material”, critically questions the idea of the digital as purely technical interface, but encourages the extension of the digital towards, or rather back, to the material world. During the conference we are aiming at reflecting architecture in its transformation – in light of the Anthropocene stipulating data-based strategies for lean automated processes for architecture production and design through big data. eCAADe2020 also focuses on technical solutions fostering ethical feedback into architectonic culture, an evolution of the human-machine interface, ubiquitous computing and machine learning.

Tracks, not limited to:

  1. Design and computation of urban and local systems – XS to XL
  2. Digital perception of Space – Cyber–physical Systems (VR, AR) – design strategies
  3. Health and materials in architecture and cities
  4. Education and digital theory – ethics, cybernetics, feedback, theory
  5. Making through code – built by data and the architectural illustration
  6. Robotic tectonics, automation and interaction
  7. The cognitive city (AI)
  8. Culture / Shift through ubiquitous computing / scripting and lingua franca
  9. BioData / BioTectonics for architectural design
  10. Cognizant Architecture – what if buildings could think