Image from a custom software system developed for the exhibition, which reconstructs Steven A. Coons' pioneering mathematical technique for parametric surface representation, the "Coons patch," enabling users to interact with it.
Assistant Professor of Architecture Dr. Daniel Cardoso Llach has just been announced as the recipient of a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The award will support the forthcoming exhibition Designing the Computational Image + Imagining Computational Design, which will draw from both history and contemporary practices to examine the origins of computational design practices and speculate about their future.
The exhibition will offer a journey through the formative period of numerical control and computer-aided design technologies, shedding light on the technical and cultural origins of present-day design languages. Materials on display will include photographs, artifacts and films drawn from archives at different institutions — including Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge, among others — illustrating the confluence of governmental, academic and industrial concerns about design, creativity and manufacturing in multidisciplinary research laboratories during the postwar period. Alongside these historical materials, a series of interactive software reconstructions developed by CMU students, and a selection of recent experimental works by architects, designers and artists will illustrate how the computer has evolved as a design medium in recent decades.
The exhibition will open on 22 September 2017 in the Miller Gallery of Contemporary Art at CMU, and run through 12 November 2017, with other venues to follow after its initial run. A symposium and a publication will accompany the exhibition. In addition to the Graham Foundation award, the exhibition has received generous support from CMU’s Berkman Fund for Faculty Development, the CMU School of Architecture Isabel Sophia Liceaga Fund and the CMU College of Fine Arts Fund for Research and Creativity.
Read more about the exhibition and view the official announcement on the Graham Foundation site.