ConCave*

ConCave Ph.D. Symposium: DIVERGENCE IN ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH

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April 4-5, 2024

Main Theater
S. Price Gilbert Memorial Library
Georgia Tech | Atlanta, GA

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The Concave Ph.D. Symposium seeks to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration by inviting scholars and doctoral students from architecture and allied fields to share their current research. One of our primary goals is to provide a supportive environment where participants can receive constructive feedback to advance their doctoral research and refine their ideas. We believe that divergent perspectives and approaches within architectural research can lead to innovative solutions and shape the future of the discipline.
Architecture, as a discipline, embodies various fields of knowledge, and architectural research often diverges into interdisciplinary domains.

Divergence in architectural research represents the agency to expand the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and cultivate new fields of knowledge emerging from within the architectural domain. It offers opportunities to forge connections between different epistemological frameworks and transforms our understanding of architecture into unanticipated forms. Embracing divergent approaches to interdisciplinary research in architecture prepares scholars and researchers for shared contributions across a rich array of intellectual fields.

Design Machines: AI as a Model of Creative Thought

Sean Hanna

UCL Bartlett

Sean Hanna is Reader in Space and Adaptive Architectures at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and a member of the UCL Space Syntax Laboratory, recognised as one of the UK’s highest performing research groups in the field of architecture and the built environment in consecutive UK Research Assessment Exercises. Prior to academia, his background is in architecture and design practice, in which his development and application of design algorithms includes work with architects Foster + Partners and sculptor Antony Gormley.

Building Material Supply Chains and Human Rights: Material Health and Forced Labor Risks in the AEC

Franca Trubiano

University of Pennsylvania

Franca Trubiano is Graduate Group Chair of the PhD Program in Architecture, Associate Professor, and a Registered Architect with l'Ordre des Architects du Québec. She is also co-director of Penn's Mellon funded, Humanities + Urban + Design Initiative.

Trubiano is author of  Building Theories, Architecture as the Art of Building (Routledge 2023), a work which sets the foundations for a critical return to the arts of making in architecture by valorizing the untapped potential of 'thinking through building'. Her forthcoming co-edited book BIO/MATTER/TECHNO/SYNTHETICS: Design for the More Than Human (ACTAR 2023) gathers design research and scholarship from twenty women whose future-ready visions for design seek to transform the discipline's definition and destiny. Trubiano's co-edited Women [Re]Build; Stories, Polemics, Futures (ORO - ar+d, 2019) features the words and works of leading women thinkers, activists, designers, and builders who have dared to ask, "Where are the Women?" and her edited book Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes: Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice (Routledge Press 2012), was translated into Korean and awarded the 2015 Sejong Outstanding Scholarly Book Award, from the Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency.

The Transatlantic Design Network: Thomas Jefferson, John Soane, and Agents of Architectural Exchange

Danielle Willkens

Georgia Tech

Although a good deal has been written about the voluminous intellectual exchange between Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth century across various humane disciplines, no study to date has focused on architectural culture, despite the fact that numerous Europeans made their way across the Atlantic to design some of America's most important buildings. In this groundbreaking work, Danielle Willkens authoritatively fills that gap, defining and expounding the "transatlantic design network" of mainly British and American individuals that included Thomas Jefferson, the architect John Soane, and Maria Cosway, an acclaimed painter, musician, composer, and educator who maintained a lifelong correspondence with both Jefferson and Soane.

Willkens places Jefferson's and Soane's famous homes in a historical and aesthetic context that extends beyond their respective renown as national shrines. She shows how, contrary to their reputations, neither represents the product of a singular architectural vision. The contributions of other architects, designers, philosophers, and friends have been effectively effaced from both Monticello and the Soane House. Willkens here corrects the record, mapping the influence of this crucial hidden network on architecture and aesthetics on both sides of the Atlantic

Interdisciplinary Design Thinking in Architecture Education

Julie Kim

Georgia Tech

This book explores the creative potential for architecture curricula to integrate solid interdisciplinary thinking in design studio education.

Annotated case studies, both from academic institutions and from professional practices, provide examples of interdisciplinary engagement in creative design work, highlighting the challenges and opportunities of this approach. Cases are from a diverse selection of international collaborators, featuring projects from the United States, Australia, Mexico, Germany, and Italy, and cover a range of project types and scales. Chapters by invited experts offer speculations on current and future models, situating examples within the broader context, and encouraging dialogue between practice and pedagogy. The collection of voices in this book offers critical and provocative lenses, learning from history while forging inventive and creative roles for the architect as practitioner, entrepreneur, strategist, choreographer, activist, facilitator, leader, and teacher.

Interdisciplinary Design Thinking provides insights into the potential of interdisciplinary engagement at the level of foundational undergraduate education, making it ideal for faculty in architecture schools. It will also be of interest to design professionals concerned with interdisciplinary collaboration and how to incorporate similar efforts in their own practices.

Understanding Academic Publishing

Elisa Dainese

Georgia Tech

Elisa Dainese is a historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism. Her work examines intersections between modern ideas of habitation, constructions of indigeneity, and knowledge production. Her research and teaching examine twentieth and twenty-first century architecture; non-Western modernisms and Indigenous cultures; questions of race, gender, and power in the design disciplines.  Dainese is currently completing a publication on the key role that sub-Saharan traditions played in the historical and conceptual refashioning of modern European and North American architecture from the 1940s to the 1970s. Her book projects also include the manuscript entitled War Diaries: Design after the Destruction of Art and Architecture (co-editor, University of Virginia Press, 2022). She is also the author of articles and essays in Bauhaus (Dec 2020), Thresholds (Spring 2020), the Journal of Architecture (June 2019), e-flux (Apr 2019) and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (Dec 2015). Elisa Dainese is a historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism. Her work examines intersections between modern ideas of habitation, constructions of indigeneity, and knowledge production. Her research and teaching examine twentieth and twenty-first century architecture; non-Western modernisms and Indigenous cultures; questions of race, gender, and power in the design disciplines. 

Dainese is currently completing a publication on the key role that sub-Saharan traditions played in the historical and conceptual refashioning of modern European and North American architecture from the 1940s to the 1970s. Her book projects also include the manuscript entitled War Diaries: Design after the Destruction of Art and Architecture (co-editor, University of Virginia Press, 2022). She is also the author of articles and essays in Bauhaus (Dec 2020), Thresholds (Spring 2020), the Journal of Architecture (June 2019), e-flux (Apr 2019) and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (Dec 2015).

Understanding Academic Job Search

Tarek Rakha

Georgia Tech

Tarek Rakha is a researcher, educator, and entrepreneur who integrates building design technology and environmental sustainability with the needs of underserved communities. He is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the High Performance Building Lab (HPBL) at Georgia Tech, and Co-founder and CEO of Lamarr.AI, a startup that commercializes technology developed through his funded academic research. Tarek is an architect by training, and before joining Georgia Tech in 2019 he was Assistant Professor at Syracuse University, after earning a Ph.D. in Building Technology from MIT in 2015.

Tarek develops novel areas of scholarship focusing on aerial data and robotics for building envelope diagnostics using computer-vision drones, urban energy sensing and computational informatics, as well as heat vulnerability and outdoor thermal comfort modeling at the building and neighborhood scales. His research received support worth over $4M (total project volume ~$7M) from federal agencies such as the US DOE, ARPA-E, and the NSF. His work was also funded by state authorities such as NYSERDA and both NYSDOT and GDOT, philanthropies such as the Sloan Foundation, as well as corporate sponsors including the Coca-Cola Company. He has published his work as author and co-author in more than 70 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and two have won best paper awards in conferences. He was recently nationally recognized by the Emerging Contributor Award from IBPSA-USA.

PANEL 1: Performance-Driven Sustainability: Pioneering Technologies in Architecture

Moderator: Patrick Kastner, Georgia Tech

“Effects of Hydrothermal Modification on The Mechanical Properties of Red Alder (Alnus Rubra) Native to The Pacific Northwest”
Kevin Muiruri, University of Washington
Indroneil Ganguly, University of Washington
Keith McPeters, GGN Seattle
Bernie Alonzo, Herrera Environmental Consultants

“Integrated Photovoltaic with Reversible Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell-Based Building Cladding Systems for Hydrogen and Oxygen Production”
Jingshi Zhang, Pennsylvania State University
Rahman Azari, Pennsylvania State University

“Using Machine Learning To Predict And Visualize Acoustic Quality In Educational Buildings”
Seyed Mohammad Hossein Tabatabaei Manesh, University of Washington
Arman Nikkhah Dehnavi, Shahid Beheshti University
Mohammad Rajaian, Michigan State University

“Grey Box Modeling to Evaluate Heat Loss Pathways in Mongolian Ger”
Max Hakkarainen, University of Pennsylvania
Evan Oskierko-Jeznacki, University of Pennsylvania
William Braham, University of Pennsylvania

“Analysis Energy Use: Manual vs Automated Window Blinds Based on Climate Scenarios”
Sepideh Niknia, Texas Tech University
Hazem Rashed-Ali, Kennesaw State University

PANEL 2: Frameworks of Power: Ideology and Infrastructure in Global Perspectives

Moderator: Sonali Dhanpal, Princeton University

“Outliving Obsolescence: Longevity, Ideology, and Style in Soviet Mass Housing”
Elise E. Schlecht, Emory University

“Water Cisterns as Urban Artifacts and Cultural Infrastructures in Yazd, Iran”
Najmeh Malekpour Bahabadi, Texas Tech University

“Tool of Impossibility: AI and the Violence of Reform in ShotSpotter’s Mediated Discourse”
Rebecca Smith, University of Michigan

““Fellow Travelers:” Professionals, Surveillance, and Social Architecture in Postwar America”
Iris Giannakopoulou Karamouzi, Yale University

PANEL 3: Urban Ecologies and Equities: Intersecting Lives, Planning, and Policies

Moderator: Perry Yang, Georgia Tech

“Assessment and Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services in a Sacrifice Zone: Evidence from Coronel, Biobío Region, Chile”
Isabel Figueroa-Aldunce, University of Florida

“Tactical Growth: Experiments Intersecting Temporary Architecture and Multispecies Design”
James Barnes, University of Virginia

“Assessing Affordable Housing Adequacy on The Atlanta BeltLine”
Jungho Ahn, University of Georgia
Stephen J. Ramos, University of Georgia

“Food Access And Urban Rights In U.S. Cities: Implications On Urban Design And Planning”
Tithi Sanyal, University of Virginia

PANEL 4: Heritage in the Digital Era: Navigating Architectural Preservation

Moderator: Danielle Willkens, Georgia Tech

“Unearthing Mandegari: A Semantic Exploration of the Enduring Qualities of Historic Places”
Shahead Maghreby, Texas A&M University and Blinn College

“Spiritual and Cultural Sustainability: Preserving Heritage in Antakya, Turkey, After the Earthquake”
Cicek Karatas Yildirim, Illinois Institute of Technology

“From HBIM to Digital Twins (DT): Developing a Sustainable Framework for Historic Asset Management”
Botao Li, Georgia Institute of Technology
Junshan Liu, Georgia Institute of Technology and Auburn University

“Deep Neural Archives: artificially augmented design in historic environment”
Smaro Katsangelou, Florida Atlantic University
Rishabh Lingam, Florida Atlantic University"

Panel 5: Constructing Narratives: Architecture as a Lens for Cultural and Historical Dialogues

Moderator: Rana Habibi, KU Leuven

"Building Belonging: Archives and Architecture as Means for Black Reparation”
Adam Lubitz, UCLA

"Seeds of Resistance: Afro-Asian Spatialities in Natal, South Africa”Amina Kaskar, KU Leuven

"Divergence in Historical Fiction: Analyzing the Arctic Imaginary Through an Architectural Lens”
Samuel Dubois, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Picturing Iranian Modernity: A Modernist Architecture Journal of the Pahlavi Dynasty”
Houman Riazi Jorshari, Pennsylvania State Unviersity

"Rem Koolhaas’s Casa Da Música: Best Adapted Screenplay (And An Ex Post Facto Plot Twist)”
Ana Luísa de Sá, Universidade do Porto

Panel 6: Building on Evidence: Integrating Research in Design, Technology, and Healthcare

Moderator: Khatereh Hadi, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)

“Exploring Environmental Impacts on Anxiety in Autistic Children in Healthcare Settings: A Narrative Literature Review”
Mina Shokrollahi Ardekani, Clemson University

“Designer and Client Perceptions of Openness in School Environments”Michael S. Nowak, Penn State University

“Impacts of Mobile Computing on Construction Management: A Comprehensive Exploration”
James Olaonipekun Toyin, Auburn University
Anoop Sattineni, Auburn University
Ayodele Ambrose Fasoyinu, Auburn University
Salman Azhar, Auburn University

“Designing cancer care for kids, by kids: Engaging Patients and Their Families in Creating More Efficient Patient-Centered Care”
Yousef Bushehri, Georgia Institute of Technology


CREDITS

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Academic Coordinators: Zahra Mirzaei, Hayri Dortdivanlioglu, and Botao Li
Media & Graphic Design: Hayri Dortdivanlioglu

Academic Advisors: Tarek Rakha, Elisa Dainese

Advisory Board:Ellen Bassett (Dean and John Portman Chair, College of Design), Nancey Green Leigh (Associate Dean for Research, College of Design), Julie Kim (William H. Harrison Chair, School of Architecture), Sonit Bafna (Ph.D. Program Director in Architecture)

Scientific Committee:

Ali Ghazvinian, Texas Tech University
Anjali Joseph, Clemson University
Arzu Gonenc Sorguc, Middle East Technical University
Athanassios Economou, Georgia Tech
Aylin Tarlan, Istanbul Bilgi University
Belgin Turan Özkaya, Middle East Technical University
Benay Gursoy, Penn State University
Christina Crawford, Emory University
Christina Shivers, Georgia Tech
Danielle Willkens, Georgia Tech
David Ejeh, Georgia Tech
ElDante Winston, Kansas State University
Eleanna Panagoulia, Georgia Tech
Elifnaz Durusoy Ozmen, Yildiz Technical University
Elisa Dainese, Georgia Tech
Ellen Dunham-Jones, Georgia Tech
Emine Cigdem Asrav, METU and Politecnico di Torino
Eunhwa Yang, Georgia Tech
Felix Heisel, Cornell University
Gregory Randolph, Georgia Tech
Günsu Merin Abbas, TU/Eindhoven
Gustavo Amaral, University of Kansas
Güven Arif Sargın, Middle East Technical University
Hannah Meszaros Martin, University of Southern California
Heather Ligler, Florida Atlantic University
Herminia Machry, University of Kansas
Hui Cai, University of Kansas
Ingeborg Rocker, Georgia Tech

Ipek Dino, Middle East Technical University
James Park, Montana State University
Jing Wen, Georgia Tech
Joseph Altshuler, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joseph Choma, Florida Atlantic University
Lars Spuybroek, Georgia Tech
Marcella Del Signore, New York Institute of Technology
Marcelo Bernal, Perkins&WIll
Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, Cornell University
Marie Alice L’Heureux, University of Kansas
Michael Moynihan, Syracuse University
Michelle Rinehart, Georgia Tech
Mo Ghasempour, Georgia Tech
Omobolanle Ogunseiju, Georgia Tech
Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts
Patrick Kastner, Georgia Tech
Paula Gomez, Georgia Tech
Perry Yang, Georgia Tech
Philip F. Yuan, Tongji University
Pinar Aykac, Middle East Technical University
Rana Habibi, Breda University
Robert R. Neumayr Beelitz, University Innsbruck
Shahab Albahar, University of Virginia
Shelby Doyle, Iowa State University
Sonali Dhanpal, Princeton University
Sonit Bafna, Georgia Tech
Tarek Rakha, Georgia Tech
Traci Rose Rider, North Carolina State University
Tzu-Chieh Kurt Hong, University of Kansas
Yasser El Masri, National Renewable Energy Lab
Zac Porter, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Zorana Matic, Northeastern University