Themes

Theme 1: Designing and Constructing

  • Design and construction disciplines and practices in transition.
  • Science in the service of technology.
  • Materials, construction, and environmental sciences.
  • From design studio to construction site: design, planning, and project management.
  • Information, design, and modeling technologies.
  • Preservation and Rehabilitation—adaptations, renovations, and recycling.
  • Efficiencies: prefabrication and modularization.
  • Green construction, sustainable building practices.
  • Construction Typology.

Theme 2: Configuring Spaces and Understanding Spaces

  • Habitats: home, work, civic, business, natural.
  • Density of Human Habitation: urban, greenfield, rural, remote.
  • Town and regional planning.
  • The ethnography of space.
  • Parks and wild spaces.
  • Designing and creating interior spaces.
  • Form, aesthetics, and function in space.
  • ‘Virtual’ space and ‘real’ space.

Theme 3: Movement and Infrastructure

  • Construction processes and flows.
  • Energy sources and destinations: reconfiguring grids.
  • Transportation modes and structures: reconfiguring flows.
  • Water needs and sources: refiguring demand and access.
  • Information flows in the constructed environment.
  • Waste handling systems.
  • The global and the local: applying human and material resources.
  • Planning for natural events: floods, droughts, earthquakes, and other acts of nature.

Theme 4: Organizing and Governing

  • Consultation, negotiation, and consensus building in design.
  • Town and regional planning.
  • Local government in the planning process.
  • Values, ethics, and aesthetics in environmental decision-making.
  • Project management processes and practices.
  • Time cycles, process transparency, quality management, and efficiencies.
  • Research and evaluation methods.
  • Law and regulation of the constructed and natural environments.
  • Human resources and workforces in the building and environment sectors.
  • Needs assessment and analysis.
  • Inclusive design: design for human needs, sensitive to human differences, affirming rights to access.
  • Environmental and social impact analyses.
  • Participatory design.