D2.S2.Keynote Speaker

Chair: Gabriela Celani, Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Keynote Conference
A Carrier Bag of Tools for Computational Feminism
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Session Language: EN (ENGLISH)
Esta presentación será en inglés y tendrá traducción al español

Abstract. This lecture will share work from the first six years of the ISU Computation & Construction Lab (CCL). The CCL is a physical space that houses digital fabrication machines and robotics – as well as a home to pedagogical experiments, fabricated objects, and theoretical ambitions collected under the hypothesis that computation is informed by and productive of architectural cultures. Or said differently: the CCL is a ‘carrier bag’ to hold the tools for constructing a feminist future for technology (See Le Guin). The CCL gathers these strategies for architecture and computation under the term computational feminism, operating relentlessly upon the cultures of architecture and computation using disciplinary tools: writing, teaching, coding, drawing, making, and building. Projects from each of these categories will be presented as methods for reflecting on how architect and designer’s make-with, attribute, and historicize computational knowledge and labor. 

Keywords. Computation, Feminism, Fabrication, Tools, Construction

Shelby Elizabeth Doyle, AIA is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Stan G. Thurston Professor of Design Build at the Iowa State University College of Design,  co-founder of the ISU Computation & Construction Lab (CCL), and director of the ISU Architectural Robotics Lab (ARL). The central hypothesis of CCL and Doyle’s work is that computation in architecture is a material, pedagogical, and social project; computation is both informed by and productive of architectural cultures. This hypothesis is explored, through the fabrication of built projects and materialized in computational practices. The CCL is invested in questioning the role of education and pedagogy in replicating existing technological inequities, and in pursuing the potential for technology in architecture as a space of and for gender equity. Doyle received a Fulbright Fellowship to Cambodia, a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Science in architecture from the University of Virginia.