500-Word Abstract Due September 7, 2013
Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s holistic worldview, the concept of Comprehensive Design was proliferated by the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog, an American counterculture publication, by Stewart Brand in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The catalogue featured innovative ideas, scientific discoveries, and technological advancements that demonstrated the interconnectedness of the environment and human activities. It emphasized the need for cross-disciplinary approaches towards understanding and nurturing our complex world. This concept also inspired a generation of computer engineers and programmers to view technology as a tool for individual empowerment and collective transformation.
45 years have passed since then, and now the concept of Comprehensive Design has evolved from a utopian idea to an actualized design tool. It not only transformed the way we network seamlessly, linking the physical with information and solving complex problems via advanced computational processes, but it also democratized and domesticated technology by offering an alternative trajectory for more open, creative, comprehensive, societies. “Rethinking Comprehensive Design” provides a cross-disciplinary context for the challenging mainstream culture of computation and invites researchers and practitioners alike to speculate and explore the potential of counterculture with an emphasis on four themes:
1. Complex calculations to explore, discover, optimize, and achieve design intentions
2. High volume real-time data with ubiquitous social network
3. Cloud computing to collaborate design processes via open source network
4. Integration of advanced materialization and fabrication processes
Besides the above specific themes, CAADRIA 2014 also invites submissions of original research papers and posters on general topics in computational design research, including but not limited to the following topics:
• Computational design research and education
• Computational design analysis
• Generative, parametric and evolutionary design
• Digital fabrication and construction
• Collaborative and collective design
• User participation in design
• Shape studies
• Design cognition
• Digital aids to design creativity
• New digital design concepts and strategies
• Virtual/augmented reality and interactive environments
• Virtual architecture and city modeling
• Human-computer interaction
• Ubiquitous and mobile computing
• Practice-based and interdisciplinary computational design research
• Theory, philosophy and methodology of computational design research
Young researchers currently involved in postgraduate studies are invited to submit their work-in-progress research papers to the CAADRIA2014 Postgraduate Student Consortium.