DFG-NSF Symposium Spatial Cognition for Architectural Design
From November 16 through 19, the 2nd DFG-NSF Symposium on “Spatial Cognition for Architectural Design” was being held in the German House New York which – among other functions – is home of the New York Office of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in North America.
The symposium – jointly organized by the German SFB/TR 8 (Freiburg University and Bremen University) and the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC; Temple University, Northwestern University, University of Chicago) – had invited 45 international researchers, educators, and industry practitioners to address the theoretical and methodological achievements of the cognitive and computational disciplines in the domain of architectural design. The principal issues that were highligted in the several symposium workshops were ranging from assistive technologies and spatial computing for design while the four keynotes during the symposium touched on topics like “Function of the Pencil in Design” (Gabriela Goldschmidt, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology), “Iteration in Design” (Ömer Akin, Carnegie Mellon University), “Design = Calculating” (George Stiny, Massachussets Institute of Technology), and “Entities and Identities” (Wilfried Wang, University of Texas at Austin).
On the evening of November 17, a public panel discussion was organized by DFG and the German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI) that engaged in discussions and debates on the core themes scientific conference. After welcoming remarks by the Deputy Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York Oliver Schnakenberg and the GCRI’s director Joann Halpern the panel “Understanding People, Spaces, and Spatial Cognition: The Interaction of Architecture, and the Cognitive and Computational Sciences” juxtaposed Christoph Hölscher (Center for Cognitive Science, Freiburg, Germany) as an expert in cognitive psychology and Mehul Bhatt (Spatial Cognition Center, Bremen, Germany) as an expert in spatial computation with practioners/academics in architecture like Gabriela Goldschmidt, Ömer Akin, and Wilfried Wang. Moderated by DFG’s New York director Eva-Maria Streier the panel addressed the central question of how to better bring together the different aspects of architectural design as art and science: analytic perspective vs. the synthesis of design creation; empirical evidence vs. design intuition; technological support vs. creative autonomy.
The more than 100 guests of the evening not only appreciated the lively panel discussion but also enjoyed the exhibition of works by 12 price winners of an architectural competition “Designing from the Inside Out: Envisioning an Academic Interchange” which was curated by Christoph Hölscher, Martin Brösamle (COSY, Bremen Germany), and Ruth Conroy Dalton (Bartlett School of Architecture, UK) which gave a practical idea of how interdisciplinary application of knowledge may provide real benefit for the theory and professional practice of architecture design, and eventually, tangible benefit for the quality of everyday personal life and work.
