Description:

Speaker

Molly Wright Steenson

Title

Architechural Intelligence: AI and Cybernetics in Architecture & Beyond

Abstract

In this lecture, Professor Wright Steenson probes the history of the relationship between artifical intelligence, cybernetics, architecture, and design. Starting in the 1960's, architects including Chistopher Alexander, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte with the MIT Architecture Machine Group took up AI and cybernetics through research and collaboration, decades earlier than we typically think of AI meeting the the built environment. These intersections gave rise to a variety of contemporary computational practices, including virtual reality, object-orientated programming languages, military simulators, remote warfare, Agile programming methods, machine learning and smart cities.

Biography

Molly Wright Steenson is a designer, author, professor, and international speaker whose work focuses on the intersection of design, architecture, and artificial intelligence. She is the Senior Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts, the K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University and an associate professor in the School of Design (with a courtesy appointment in the School of Architecture). Steenson is the author of Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT Press, 2017), which tells the radical history of AI’s impact on design and architecture, and the forthcoming book Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press, expected 2019), co-edited with Laura Forlano & Mike Ananny. A web pioneer since 1994, she’s worked at groundbreaking design studios, consultancies, and Fortune 500 companies. She holds a PhD in Architecture from Princeton University, a Master’s in Environmental Design (architectural history) from Yale School of Architecture, and a BA in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with honors and distinction.