In November 2024, Archinect brought together four program chairs from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) for a wide-ranging roundtable conversation.
The questions up for debate and discussion were among the most pressing facing the architectural community, be it in education, practice, or beyond: What will the impact of artificial intelligence be on the profession? How do we respond to the built environment's contributions to climate change? What issues are we not talking about enough? What advice can we give to the next generation?
The roundtable discussion, edited for clarity, is available to watch and read below.
When Archinect convened four SCI-Arc program chairs for a roundtable discussion in November 2024, it offered an opportunity to view pressing issues related to architecture and the built environment through multiple lenses in a single moment.
The four participants spanned the length and breadth of architectural education in terms of student level and program subject: Kristy Balliet (Undergraduate Programs Chair, Design Studio, Liberal Arts), Marcelyn Gow (Undergraduate Programs Chair, Design Studio, History + Theory), Elena Manferdini (Graduate Programs Chair, Design Studio, Graduate Thesis), and David Ruy (Postgraduate Programs Chair, MS Synthetic Landscapes Coordinator). This breadth of perspectives all sit under the common umbrella of SCI-Arc; a gravitational center for innovation in a gravitational city for creativity and imagination.
What emerged from the conversation, which can be watched above or read below, is a call for a collaborative spirit as architectural academia, the profession, and the built environment face a series of multi-faceted, complex challenges and unanswered questions.
On climate change, there were calls for a radical rethinking of core environmental concepts, for more creative forms of communication, and for an embrace of new methodologies and technologies on everything from embodied carbon to resilience. On artificial intelligence, there were calls to engage proactively at the cutting edge, to broaden our perspectives of how AI can manifest in architecture, and to ask critical questions on where the human designer sits in an age of machine intelligence.
Across all topics, there were calls for architectural academia to lead conversations, explorations, and collaborations, encouraging and equipping their students to “swim forward at all times.”
In a recent conversation with architectural designer and educator Tessa Forde, the architecture school was described as a “laboratory for practice” and a “virtual reality space for practicing in the real world.”
Like in practice, the architecture school comprises a constellation of designers at different levels of experience, knowledge, and skills, with a wide variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and interests. Likewise, the architecture school curriculum is an assemblage of various lenses through which we see the profession, be it history, theory, liberal arts, technology, representation, design studio, and so on.
In our roundtable, we took advantage of the opportunity to ask a group of leaders whose programs span this wide array of student levels and subjects: how should these variables all relate to each other? Do programs and student levels benefit from integration with one another? Do they benefit from being siloed without a need to compromise? Is there a middle ground?
What is the ideal relationship between your programs? Should different programs and student stages be integrated or siloed?
Particularly in the undergraduate program, because it's a five-year program, it's important as we design the curriculum that both autonomy and interaction exist. There are moments when it's important that there is autonomy within the liberal arts program, for example, to dive into broader topics and develop cultural citizens. Then, there are moments when the studios need to focus on foundational skills across courses and years. With that said, vertical studios are incredibly important, where the curriculum is set up to deliver content from faculty to student and from student to student, too.
Kristy Balliet
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
Our curriculum is set up so that we have a core series of courses that are specialized for each stage in the BArch and the BSc Design. But as students progress through the curriculum and begin to take on more responsibility in their projects, they can take elective seminars where they study alongside students from other programs. I always find those collaborations extremely rich because students bring their own different forms of expertise. The different kinds of research they've been doing come to the table, and there's a really rich dialogue between them.
Marcelyn Gow
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
The MArch 1 and MArch 2 programs have a shared history. Both are NAAB-accredited and confer the same degree. However, the students in each program typically have different levels of expertise. MArch 2 students already hold a degree in architecture, while MArch 1 students come from a variety of other design disciplines. In the last year of the curriculum, the two programs merge, which adds richness and depth to the overall educational experience. This convergence fosters a multidisciplinary approach to architecture, particularly due to the diverse backgrounds of the MArch 1 students.
Elena Manferdini
Graduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
On one hand, it is necessary to silo your expertise because you have to be good at it. You can't be a dilettante in forms of expertise; you actually have to develop expertise. So a degree of siloing does have to happen, but simultaneously, you need to develop the ability to speak across disciplines. One expert needs to be able to collaborate with a different kind of expert. So our programs are set up where there are portions of it that are completely dedicated to what needs to be done within the program itself. And then, there are the parts of the curriculum where there is an encouragement for collaboration with people from the other programs.
David Ruy
Postgraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
Throughout the past four years, artificial intelligence has become a topic of intense discussion and debate within and beyond the architecture community. Throughout 2023, our Archinect In-Depth: Artificial Intelligence series interviewed over 30 experts in the field, producing dozens of interviews and features alongside almost 50 news stories covering the hyper-fast pace of progress emerging from the AI community.
Among our findings were that AI evokes a wide range of emotions across the industry. Some see significant potential for AI to fill skills gaps, empower architects, and enable safer and more efficient design proposals. Others see the conversation as a distraction from other more urgent crises, such as climate change. Finally, others worry AI could reduce the agency and value of human designers.
In our roundtable discussion, we asked our four SCI-Arc program chairs what comes to mind when they think about artificial intelligence and architecture, how it intersects with their own work, and how they see the technological landscape unpacking in the coming years.
What are your thoughts on the present and future relationship between artificial intelligence and architecture?
When I hear the words ‘AI in architecture,’ I immediately think of collaboration. It is important and necessary that we as humans exercise our capacity for critical thinking at all times when using these tools. Rather than trying to bracket them out, think about embracing them in a way that situates the role of the human and the role of machine intelligence as a collaborative act. There are certain things that we can access with a speed that we did not have before and certain kinds of research we can conduct, but we must always be aware that AI will bring questions to the discussion that we need to think about. How much of this do we want to engage with and use? How do we want to use it? And how is our own voice or our own design sensibility being transformed through the use of these tools?
Marcelyn Gow
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
In the field of knowledge production—of which architecture and universities are key players—the integration of AI is inevitable. However, the broader goal of a university should not merely be to adopt these technologies, but to reimagine the entire learning experience. I believe this shift will be a game-changer. In architecture, AI will be transformative in the near term. It will enable architects to analyze data, optimize designs, and enhance creativity with greater speed and efficiency.
We’ll also see a shift in the labor market and a democratization of skills. A new industry is emerging, with fresh job opportunities. For those entering a Master's program, this is an exciting moment to sharpen skills, as there is a growing demand for individuals who can effectively interact with AI and lead this revolution. AI will significantly expand both what architects are asked to do and what they are capable of achieving.
Elena Manferdini
Graduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
I see three major types of speculations about AI beyond the architecture world. The first is about making tools; not just about making images, but all kinds of new tools. The second category is far more esoteric, somewhat weirder, and centers on AI as a new form of autonomy; whether or not it's consciousness, and are we going to reach AGI. The third type of discussion I find the most interesting, which is AI as a phenomenon, AI as a thing itself. It is a new kind of phenomenon and, therefore, is worthy of discursive thought, consideration, and observation, almost like we would observe natural phenomena. That is an extremely interesting and important area of investigation. It might, therefore, be interesting to think about other possibilities for AI outside of toolmaking. Instead of words such as application, automation, efficiency, or functionality, might we instead have conversations where we use words such as critic, advisor, teacher, or companion?
David Ruy
Postgraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
We have been integrating artificial intelligence into our first-year teaching for the last five years. At the same moment that students are learning the foundational skills of critical thinking, drawing, and modeling, whether that be physical or digital, AI has been on the table and in the discussion. It is not there to be something sparkling or advanced but to be a reminder that AI is in the discussion and in the discipline that students are entering. […] When you begin to develop yourself as a creative agent today, you realize how massively collaborative it is compared to fifteen or twenty years ago. Artificial intelligence should be considered one of those collaborators, critics, or partners in iteration. If you teach it at the very beginning of the curriculum, that is automatically going to create a generation more critical of what it can do and invent with AI, which is part of their design responsibility.
Kristy Balliet
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
While the current architectural discourse on artificial intelligence gained a critical mass in recent years, concerns over the built environment’s effects on climate change are longstanding. Similar to the AI discourse, however, the climate discourse elicits a range of responses across the architectural community, particularly in conversations over how the industry can reduce the damage of its ecological footprint.
Some designers direct their attention to energy efficiency and new technologies that improve operational building performance. Others focus on material science and building products that engage with a circular economy. Others draw inspiration from nature, pursuing design strategies that mimic or feed off of other biological systems and principles.
We asked our four roundtable participants for their reflections on how climate and ecology intersect with their work, their views on the relationship between architecture and climate change, and their hopes and visions for how this relationship can become healthier.
What is your view on the relationship between architecture and climate change, and how that relationship can become less damaging?
As somebody teaching in the Synthetic Landscapes program, I think about this every day. I take a somewhat more radical position. Our current concepts of mitigation pertaining to words such as sustainability, green aesthetics, or LEED certification are wholly inadequate, are quite misleading, and historically are deeply problematic in their intentions […] We need to develop new concepts beyond sustainability, beyond the green, and it’s not such a safe set of concepts that we'll need. We must be a lot more aggressive in rethinking some of these terms. One example is the word nature. After studying it for three decades, there's nothing else to conclude but that nature is a historical concept that comes from 16th and 17th century Europe. If I say nature, we think of mountains, lakes, and cute mammals. Why not viruses? Why not the Moon? Also, an image that will never come to mind when I say nature is a human face […] This is a sign of how difficult it is to rethink this. I don't even know how to talk about a phenomenon like climate change without somehow incorporating the word nature. Our conceptual apparatus and our language are inadequate right now. It seems like something that should be worked on in higher education.
David Ruy
Postgraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
We have been working in our courses and with our students to shift away from assigning terminology that would blanket our understanding of how climate issues can be fixed or mediated. Students have understood this for years, but recently, several electives in the school have gained traction. One is on embodied carbon, which has been very impactful on how architects think about the weight and implications of their design decisions and understand those decisions in a larger circular economy. Last year, we saw our first thesis where a student wasn’t explicitly working on a building but on a circular workflow. This is not new and is being worked on in many places, but it is a step in the right direction, where these exercises are held at a high formal or intellectual study.
Kristy Balliet
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
One area in relation to climate change that is fundamental to consider is how we communicate about these issues. These issues can seem so vast and it can be difficult for an individual to understand how changes in their personal practices will impact the larger situation we all find ourselves in. It is imperative that architects and designers develop tools for staging these conversations […] One thing that we're doing in our Bachelor of Science in Design program, which I’m very excited about, is looking at how we can use storytelling and the production of narratives to explore some of the possibilities for these existing technologies as well as technologies that are nascent in their development right now. What would happen if we integrate this technology or this way of thinking about material reclamation? How might that change what we're designing and their relationship to the environment? In our program, we are making films, simulations, data environments, and interactive environments where these questions are being dealt with in terms of environmental futures.
Marcelyn Gow
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
Students will soon be entering the profession as architects, and those in the graduate program will be confronting these issues in just two or three years, particularly in cities like Los Angeles, where the annual wildfire season continues to destroy homes. In response, we’re offering a class that focuses on the impact of climate change in Los Angeles—an incredible opportunity for students to contribute to meaningful change. We’re collaborating with other institutions in the city, and the outcomes of this work will be featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2025.
At SCI-Arc, there is a strong desire to connect with other areas of expertise across the city, as well as a growing appetite to explore innovative solutions. Architects are eager to educate themselves and lead the way in addressing these challenges.
Elena Manferdini
Graduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
While issues as complex and multi-faceted as climate change and technological shifts deserve extensive attention within academia, practice, and the media, they are not the only topics that intersect with the architectural profession. Archinect’s own editorial has recently featured in-depth explorations on issues spanning inequality, economics, mental health, visual representation, organizing, and more.
With this in mind, we asked each of our roundtable participants to identify one issue they felt should be discussed more in the architectural community, both in academia and beyond.
What is one issue beyond artificial intelligence and climate change that you believe we should be talking more about?
We need to double down on our ability to visually and verbally communicate with one another at a time when the vocabulary is exponentially increasing. We have to use our skills and develop new skills as architects to be able to figuratively and literally keep people in the same room.
Kristy Balliet
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
Fostering the emergence of global citizens is essential in today’s world. We now teach and learn in global classrooms, where the question is no longer about one institution versus another. The conversation involves many stakeholders, and we must recognize that we are part of a global community with a highly diverse audience. Leading a school today means prioritizing the alignment of values and purpose within the curriculum, with the goal of nurturing these global citizens.
Elena Manferdini
Graduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
This post-truth environment we seem to be living in is not a Trump phenomenon. It has been building for quite a while, where the authority of institutions and our normal sources of information have broken down. Much of this is more traceable not to our current political climate but to the appearance of the internet and the mass distribution of communications […] I don't see how much longer we can go on thinking that everybody is equally right and equally wrong. I just don't see how we can have a civilization that way. I also don't see how we can have institutions of higher learning in such a state of broken epistemologies. I'm not universally agreed with on this point, but I think it's important to reconstruct epistemology for the 21st century. How do we make knowledge? How do we understand what a fact is?
David Ruy
Postgraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
I think a major issue we should pay attention to in architectural academia and the profession is to reflect on how we can create more spaces in our architecture and design curricula for students to engage in a process of coming to know, discover, and generate design principles. We should continue to ask ourselves questions as educators: What is it that we would like our students to know or to know how to do as they graduate from our schools and how well do we think we are doing in achieving this? How might we augment the question “What will I be able to do?” with the question “How might I be able to think about this?” And lastly, how do we establish common grounds within our field; how do we converse and what do we create?
Marcelyn Gow
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
As educators and academic leaders, each of our four roundtable participants is heavily invested in launching the careers of future architects and designers. As our conversation drew to a close, we asked each program chair what advice they would give to the next generation.
What is your advice for the next generation of architects?
I would argue that architects are not just designers—they are generalists. They wear many hats: business leaders, entrepreneurs, technologists, inventors, philosophers, researchers, writers, artists, and cultural agents, among many others. The key is to stay curious and embrace opportunities for flexible learning. The profession of architecture as we know it today will undergo significant transformation in the next 25 years. Since education has no expiration date, this is something I remind myself of every day. It’s a vital part of how we continue to grow and adapt in an ever-changing field.
Elena Manferdini
Graduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
The advice I would give to the next generation of architects and designers is to cultivate a sense of curiosity. Curiosity is so important in getting us engaged with our world. Likewise, cultivate a sense of wonder; when not knowing how something works or what the factors behind it are, to approach that with a sense of optimism. I also think it's crucial that we continue to believe in the power of design thinking. Considering the many pressing challenges we face today, our ideas, voices, and architectural visions will continue to be an inspiring presence in shaping our world.
Marcelyn Gow
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
We live during a time of reactionary politics—make whatever it is you care about 'great again,' whether it's America or architecture. I would like to ask young people to resist nostalgia because even if you want to, you're not going to be able to go back. Time only moves in one direction. Swim forward at all times.
David Ruy
Postgraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
Definitely swim forward. Don't sink. Don't tread water. My big piece of advice would be, as you are developing your approach to design, to also take on the proactive stance of designing the career that you want to have within design.
Kristy Balliet
Undergraduate Programs Chair, SCI-Arc
Niall Patrick Walsh is an architect and journalist, living in Belfast, Ireland. He writes feature articles for Archinect and leads the Archinect In-Depth series. He is also a licensed architect in the UK and Ireland, having previously worked at BDP, one of the largest design + ...
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