When it comes to computational methods in design, architecture, and the built environment, practices and relations aspire for “neutral” and “optimized” techno-solutions to design problems. Portrayal of these computational tools and methods as neutral platforms enabling participation in design hides the social, political, and racial entanglements involved in their creation and expansion (Nakamura 2014; Bridle 2018; Benjamin 2019). The narrative of neutrality conceals the power computer-aided design (CAD) software monopolies hold and absolves them from their negative social effects. It also obscures their values and relations to injustice, racism, and inequality. Another goal of the CAD industry is the continuous ambition for optimization which has gone through phases of form, fabrication, and now data (Marble 2018). Optimization through fabrication in computational architecture and design includes the push for industrial off-site construction with robotics, manufacturing assemblies, and technologies. Optimization through data includes new forms of automation and machine intelligence to free designers from the toll of repetitive and non-creative tasks. In conversation with the 2021 conference theme, we invite scholarship that seeks to understand and uncover the power relations between (commercial) CAD systems, computational design practices, education, and their reproductions of oppressions at multiple scales. What does optimization really mean, and who benefits? What do we gain and lose in this never-ending goal of optimization and the apparent disappearance of humans from the process? Our goal is to shed light on and conceptualize the power relations between computational design, the built environment, and society.

Chairs:

• Vernelle A Noel, University of Florida;
• Yana Boeva, University of Stuttgart