PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Building, Builders, and Built-Things: Pittsburgh, Charleston, and Chiang Mai
Building, Builders, and Built-Things: Pittsburgh, Charleston, and Chiang Mai
Vernelle A. A. Noel, Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor in Architecture, Carnegie Mellon Architecture
Tommy CheeMou Yang, Special Faculty, Carnegie Mellon Architecture
This project conducts inquiry into acts of building, their builders, and built-things to repair – restore, remediate and reconfigure – cultures of making and computation. By extending the concept of repair, theory-building in the art of building, and computational regionalism, this project will answer new questions about computation and repair. Building on “Craft Practices and Computation in Three Cultures” (3CCD) from 2023-24, the “Building, Builders, and Built-Things” (BBBT) cross-cultural study digs deeper with three main components: 1) archival research, 2) ethnographic fieldwork, and 3) computational design inquiry to investigate acts of building in craft and architecture, builders and built-things through craft histories and practices in Pittsburgh; artisanal training and crafts in South Carolina; and vernacular tectonics in Thailand. By employing these methods, we will better understand different cultures of building, their values in relation to computation, their conceptualizations and outcomes of skill, how computational modes might repair their practices, and how their practices might repair computational frameworks and methods. The outcomes of this project will include a digital archive, papers, presentations, control models, and a workshop to disseminate work.
Image: Vernelle A. A. Noel.
About the Project Lead
Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor in Architecture & Situated Computation + Design Lab Director
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Established in 2023 by PJ Dick Trumbull Lindy Group, the Faculty Grants Program will award a total of $400,000 over four years beginning in 2024. The program supports faculty research and teaching innovations that address the School’s three pedagogical challenges of climate change, social justice and artificial intelligence. The proposals were assessed on their impact in furthering a faculty member’s research and teaching, their contribution to interrogating the School’s challenges, and their viability to garner further research support, make an impact on the discipline and expand the pedagogy of the School.