POSTPONED - Connective Practices: Community, Values, and Design Symposium

Design disciplines are evolving their processes and products within a shifting social economy, one that demands a positive social and environmental return. This raises many important questions for expanding fields of practice surrounding a wider range of methods and processes including participatory design, social science research, building sciences, technology, and more. What models can we integrate and how do we interpret findings to affect potential solutions? How do we converge expertise? These questions about interdisciplinary integration are especially important now, when we are up against complex challenges at larger scales of impact for humanity and the environment, and the built environment is a lever for change.

Join us as we explore a wide range of ways a diversity of experts are adapting their philosophies and practices to address these issues. We'll also dive into collaborative activities to get a sense for how transdisciplinary experts engage to better understand the communities they're designing with and embed the values that guide the solutions.

*Each panel offers 1 LU | 1 HSW credits*

Schedule:
9:00–9:15am: Welcome and Registration
9:15–9:30am: Opening remarks
9:30–10:45am: Models of Engagement
10:45am–12:00pm: Values, Priorities, and Practice
12:15–1:00pm: Networking Lunch
1:00–2:15pm: Guides for Interpretation
2:15–2:30pm: Afternoon Break
2:30–3:15pm: Rounding the Circle
3:15–4:00pm: Reception

Panel 1: Models of Engagement
This dialogue convenes practitioners who work with or have helped to create new methods and frameworks that blend strategies from different disciplines. This fast-paced introduction to process and methods will provide participants with models of engagement to enhance solutions via participatory design, deeply interpreting design politics, and employing speculative fiction for visionary decision-making. The provocations offered are set to foster rich conversations emphasizing the role of self-awareness and positioning in practice. The theme—engagement—will be explored as a rich convergence of critical theories with experiential practices toward crafting innovative and meaningful insights and outcomes. Discussions will touch on the use of data in designing intelligent buildings, finding essential data for resolving design queries, and improving projects via interdisciplinary cooperation.

Speakers:
Asima Jansveld, Chief Program and Engagement Officer, Friends of the High Line
Melissa S. Lee, Principal, Public Works Partners
Ifeoma Ebo, Founding Principal, Creative Urban Alchemy
Priyanka Jain, Co-Founder, 3x3

Panel 2: Values, Priorities, Practice
How do our own personal values shape our practices?  How can a designer navigate competing values and priorities and structures? Explore how values-based inquiry can frame a practice that benefits communities and the role that design processes play in supporting values, in both immediate and ongoing ways. Through engaging discussions and reflective exercises, participants will enhance their grasp of how existing and new frameworks embody social values and uphold rigorous assessment.

Speakers:
Laura Wainer, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, The City College of New York, CUNY
Surella Segu, Professor, Rhode Island School of Design, and Co-founder, El Cielo
Claudia Dobles Camargo, Research Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism

Breakout Group Facilitators:
Evie Klein, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute
Fauzia Khanani, Founding Principal, Studio Fōr; Visiting Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute

Panel 3: Guides for Interpretation
This dialogue explores the concept of translation, when theoretical frameworks and validated research data/findings must infuse another discipline with applicable strategies. The emphasis of the conversation looks at the skillset bridge between disciplines and the application of research and theoretical concepts to discover new methodologies for utilizing data, identifying opportunity gaps, and connecting research with practice. This dialogue highlights the importance of transforming different types of data into actionable design strategies, encouraging a profound investigation into the ways data shapes and enhances practice, process, and constructing new knowledge.

Speakers:
Julia Day, Partner, Team Director, Gehl - Making Cities for People
Melissa Marsh, Founder and CEO, PLASTARC
Dina Sorensen, Assoc. AIA, Founder and Design Director, d.studio