October 18 - 20, 2018 | Universidad Iberoamericana | Mexico City

RECALIBRATION
on imprecision and infidelity
Mexico City \\ Universidad Iberoamericana \\ October 15 - 17, 2018

Convocatoria en español

Through the theme of recalibration, this year’s ACADIA conference presents a challenge to shift our direct gaze from the machine in order observe it and its context from alternative viewpoints. This act of rhetorical refocusing is also accompanied by a physical relocation, this year’s conference being held for the first time outside of the US and Canada. The 2018 conference will take place in a location that is at once a dense contemporary megalopolis and a site of extraordinary difference and contrast. Nevertheless this change of venue is intended to be an operation of engaging and incorporating.

In the rhetorical sense, this recalibration underlines the need focus a discussion on the materialization of design and architecture, their relationship to computation, production, form, data, and indeed to matter itself. The conference seeks to open a new dialog recognizing that contemporary architectural production must inevitably result from the mediation between an ‘ideal’ precision/accuracy obtainable through digital methodologies, and the imprecision and infidelity of the physical/material world around us, simultaneously acknowledging the interrelated importance of both analog and digital processes, and privileging neither one over the other.

ACADIA seeks papers for the 2018 conference that can foster a discussion about the future of work in the realm of architecture and related disciplines. The conference will accommodate the evolving trajectory of the wide history of work in our field, while opening up dialogs related to questions of computational style, errors and surprises, the relationship to the complexity of physical reality as well as perceived reality, and the value of reflection and critical thinking as a tool for computation.

ACADIA 2018 Specific Themes + Topics:

• Materializations of computational design strategies (biomaterials, computational materials, etc.)
• Illusory dichotomies: critical interrogations of the digital and analogue
• With/in tolerance: Exploring the limits of precision from computation to fabrication
• Computational infidelities: similitude, noise and glitch as generators
• Programmed imprecision (production, representation, design, etc.)
• Human / nonhuman architectural programming (computational and actual)
• Emerging models of digital representation / fabrication
• Robotics / AI / Machine Learning
• Composite materials and smart assemblies
• Responsive systems and environments (sensing, real-time computation, actuation, and feedback)

Contact: 2018@acadia.org
#acadia2018