Posted by I am currently recruiting Ph.D. students to join the Situated Computation + Design Lab (Sit.Co.De) at Georgia Tech.
Applications are due December 31st for a Fall 2023 start date. The student will be funded for two years as a GRA, after which funding may be sought through grants, teaching assistantships, etc. to work in one or more of the following research areas:
1. Craft Practices, Computation, and Cognition
The vision of this work is to revive and reveal possibilities in craft for future technological, social, and cultural innovations, inventions, and advancements. Two questions that drive this work are:
- How might computational ideas, methods, and technologies repair craft + cultural practices? and
- How might practices and labors in craft cultures repair computational ideas and theoretical frameworks?
I use design/ making, computation, and ethnographic methods as forms of inquiry and study into the possibilities for new tools, frameworks, and methods. We also ask questions about cognition.
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2. Critical Computation
This work involves recognizing and revealing the social, political, and historical entanglements of computational systems and technologies developed and used in design and construction. Some questions include:
- What critical tools, theories, and processes might we make part of our practices, pedagogy, and research to consider questions of justice?
- How are computational design tools, infrastructures, and practices implicated in systems of oppression?
- What new approaches, tools, and frameworks can repair computational design such that it refuses to remain ignorant of the structures that shape our theories and technologies?
- What role can design computation play in revealing questions of power, access, and ethics?
I use a Situated Computations approach which is an approach to computational design (research, practice, and pedagogy) that grounds our tools, methods, and theories in the social world by acknowledging the historical, cultural, and material contexts of design and making. It responds to a setting’s social and technological infrastructure and refuses to remain ignorant of the social and political structures that shape them.
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3. Lightweight Structures
Work in this area takes a conceptual approach to “lightweight.” Based on the philosophy of Lucio Blandini, we consider lightweight beyond the physical to include using technology for structures to be light in terms of the environment, biomaterials, fabrication methods, waste, passive energy, community, etc. In this area, we bring together design, technology, materials science, sustainability, culture, and more for the creation of lightweight structures. We conduct inquiries into materials, systems, tectonics, construction, and more. Close connections and applications are made in architecture, construction, and dancing sculptures.
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4. Heritage
Work in this area employs computational and digital technologies in the service of preserving, restoring, studying, reconstructing, and presenting heritage for new and imagined understandings and possibilities.
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5. Artificial Intelligence and Architecture
In this area, we explore and conduct inquiries into the development and use of machine learning systems and artificial intelligence in architectural theory, practice, and pedagogy. Here we also use the Situated Computations framework as a point of departure for a new framework when it comes to data and its use in automated systems. Questions include:
- What machine learning systems and algorithms
- What are the implications for the humanities in architectural culture with the use of AI systems in design?
- What might AI systems in architecture tell us about human intelligence, society, and culture?
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Job description: The Ph.D. student’s skills and background can include one or more of the following:
- Design Computation/ architecture
- Media Studies
- STS (Science Technology Society) studies
- Interactive Computing
- Computer Science
It is expected that the Ph.D. student produces academic publications for conferences and journals during their time at Sit.Co.De.