DANIEL CARDOSO LLACH AND THEODORA VARDOULI | “DESIGNING THE COMPUTATIONAL IMAGE, IMAGINING COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN” | SOA'S FALL '23/SPRING '24 LECTURE SERIES

Daniel Cardoso Llach and Theodora Vardouli co-authored the book Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design a book visually examining the twentieth-century emergence of new methods for representation, simulation, and manufacturing linked to computers, and reflecting on their contemporary repercussions across creative fields.

During the three decades following the Second World War, and before the advent of the personal computer, government investment in university research in North America and the UK funded multidisciplinary projects to investigate the use of computers for manufacturing and design. Documenting the eponymous curatorial project, Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design explores this period of remarkable inventiveness and traces its repercussions on architecture and other creative fields through the work of computational architects, designers, and artists working today.

Alongside a compelling visual archive showcasing hundreds of unpublished or lesser-known computational images, drawings, films, and software, the book features essays by architecture, media, and science and technology scholars offering close readings of specific images, as well as conversations and interviews with historical protagonists and contemporary practitioners. Together, these materials illuminate in unprecedented detail the confluence of technical innovations in software, geometry, and hardware with a fledging technological imaginary of design and creativity, tracing the emergence — and reimagining the potentials — of a vibrant field of interdisciplinary research and practice.

Daniel Cardoso Llach, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he chairs the graduate program in Computational Design and directs CodeLab. He is the author of publications, exhibitions, and technologies critically exploring the nexus of design and computation, including the book Builders of the Vision: Software and the Imagination of Design, a history of computer-aided design (CAD) that identifies and documents technological theories of design emerging from postwar government-funded research projects at MIT, and reflects critically on their architectural repercussions. His new book, Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design, co-edited with Theodora Vardouli, draws from historical and contemporary materials to trace the emergence of computational design ideas and practices across a broader landscape of institutions in the US, the UK, and Canada.

Daniel received a PhD and a MS in Architecture: Design and Computation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a professional B. Arch from Universidad de los Andes. In 2016 he was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge’s Martin Centre in the UK, and a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of Media Cultures of Computer Simulation in Leuphana, Germany. He has held faculty appointments at Penn State and Universidad de los Andes, consulted as a computational design specialist for Gehry Technologies and Kohn Pedersen Fox, among others, and practiced as a licensed architect and media designer in his native Bogotá.

Theodora Vardouli, Ph.D., is an architect and scholar of design in its entwining with digital technologies and computation. She holds a PhD in Design and Computation from the MIT Department of Architecture and is an Assistant Professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University where she directs the Computational Design Exploratory (CoDEx). She is an External Examiner for two graduate programs at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and a member of the editorial board for the journal Technology, Architecture + Design (TAD). Vardouli’s research has received support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture. She is also an Onassis, A.G. Leventis, and Fulbright Foundation scholar.

Vardouli’s research examines histories, cultural meanings, and operational implications of algorithmic techniques for architectural design through a combination of historical inquiry and critical design and making. She is co-editor, with Olga Touloumi, of Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground (Routledge, 2020) and, with Daniel Cardoso Llach, of Designing the Computational Image (Applied Research and Design Publishing, forthcoming 2022) – a book based on the eponymous exhibition curated by Cardoso Llach (Pittsburgh 2017) and expanded in collaboration with Vardouli for Canada (Montreal 2021).

Along with Cardoso Llach, Vardouli co-founded Lattice Space, a platform for critical and creative research at the nexus of design and computation. Vardouli is currently working on a monograph (under contract with the MIT Press), which examines postwar architecture’s relationship with mathematics with focus on the material and symbolic prevalence of graphs.

Daniel Cardoso Llach and Theodora Vardouli visit FAU SoA on Thursday, February 8, 2024, as part of the Fall '23/Spring '24 Lecture Series. Join us at 3 PM at the MetroLAB