Emerging Technologies

Explore how cutting-edge tools and real-time collaboration platforms are transforming design processes, from bespoke furniture to digital environments that democratise creativity. Whether you're curious about sustainable materials, innovative workflows, or collaborative design using gaming tech, this session is your ticket to staying ahead of the curve.

Alvin Huang | Synthesis Design |Podcast Recording

Speaker BIO: Founder and Principal of Synthesis Design + Architecture and Director of Graduate and Post-Professional Architecture at LA’s University of Southern California. He holds an MArch from London’s Architectural Association Design Research Lab and a BArch from USC. We explore the strong technological focus of Alvins work and the use of emerging technologies to challenge the status quo and create innovative designs. We explore a range of scales, from bespoke furnishings to hi-rise building towers.

In this podcast Alvin will be interviewed by DK about his architectural practice, his past and current projects along with his design methodology.

Learning outcomes:

• Learn about sustainable aspects to build with an emphasis on design strategies.
• Understanding bespoke design methodologies.
• A insight to emerging technologies.

Alexander Grasser | Digital collaboration using gaming environments is extremely innovative.

Speaker BIO: Alexander Grasser-Parger is an architect, lecturer, researcher, and generative artist. His work and research explores real-time participatory digital design, computational design methods, and generative building systems. Alexander holds a PhD from TU Graz, a Master’s from Innsbruck University, and an undergraduate degree from TU Vienna. As a full-time university assistant at the Institute of Architecture and Media, he led seminars, workshops, and design studios, conducted research, and completed his PhD dissertation, Collaborative Objects as Design Media. He also taught regularly as a visiting lecturer in the B-Pro Program at The Bartlett, UCL. In addition, Alexander works as a freelance architect, gaining experience as a computational design expert in architectural offices in Vienna, Berlin, and Shanghai.

Alexander’s work has been exhibited throughout the world, including the Francisco Carolinum Museum Linz, the Museum of Applied Arts Frankfurt, the Spektrum Gallery Berlin, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, VerticalCrypto Art & the NFT Gallery in London & New York, the NFT Show Europe Valencia and most recently an online solo exhibition „OPEN FORM - Variation through Code and Participation" at the Digital Francisco Carolinum Museum in CryptoVoxels.

Talk Topic: Digital collaboration using gaming environments is extremely innovative.

Alexander will discuss collaborative architecture and how he has created a platform within his teaching and research. Collaborative Matter(s) explores a Realtime Architecture Platform, which was applied in a telepresence design studio to design and construct different prototypes.

The platform, enables an open workflow to collaborate and design in unity. It provides an online persistent environment for realtime architectural production. The work method is based on the concept of collaborative objects and distributed designers. These collaborative objects are the shared content: discrete parts, prefabs or blocks that enable interaction, communication and collaboration with and between it’s users and owners. The distributed designers can contribute, by instantiating these collaborative objects. The users get immersed in digital proximity by communicating through the integrated chat or digital calls, discussing strategies, debating on design intentions, analysing the built structure, and scanning for improvements. This pervasive collaboration lays the foundation for a democratisation of the design process.

Learning outcomes:

• Introduction to Collaborative Matter(s) and what that means.
• An insight into digital collaboration using gaming environments.
• The potential impact this technology will have on architecture and how we look at design.