This event will be conducted in-person in the Library Atrium and through Zoom. 

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

The technical logic of electronic computation offers a radical alternative to the mode of mass production we have inherited from the industrial revolution, which are based on economies of scale and standardization.  Can robotic automation and distributed fabrication help us envisage a new way of making which would avoid the exploitative logic of industrial modernity, and combine social justice and environmental sustainability?  The building site is notoriously a socio-technical laggard, yet the design professions have been in the past, and still are, uniquely positioned to conceptualize technical visions that go beyond the ambit and immediate constraints of project delivery. 

This roundtable gathers theorists, practitioners and scholars Michael Young, Nader Tehrani, Elisa Iturbe in a discussion around and with Mario Carpo about his book Beyond Digital. 

Mario Carpo is the Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural Theory and History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London.  He has also held teaching positions in France, the United States, and Austria.  He was the Head of the Study Centre at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, and has held prominent positions in the field including Senior Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute, Resident at the American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Fellow for architecture, among others. 

Mr. Carpo's research and publications focus on the history of early modern architecture and the theory and criticism of contemporary design and technology. His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001) has been translated into several languages.  He is the author of The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011), The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence (2017), and other books.  His latest monograph, Beyond Digital. Design and Automation at the End of Modernity was published last spring by the MIT Press.

The in-person event is open to current Cooper Union Students, Faculty, and Staff only. The Public may attend this event through Zoom.