California College of the Arts’ acclaimed Architecture Division is pleased to announce a new Academic Alliance with the Autodesk Technology Centers beginning in spring 2021. Through the Academic Alliance, Autodesk Technology Centers will work with the Architectural Ecologies Lab (AEL) and the Digital Craft Lab (DCL), two of CCA Architecture’s four teaching and research labs, to provide opportunities for CCA students to join Autodesk Technology Center’s Outsight Network and leverage the associated workshops and studios under the supervision of the AEL and DCL lab directors.

On Friday, April 16, at 12 pm PT, CCA Architecture and Autodesk Technology Centers will co-present a panel discussion, “The Future of Learning: Industry and Academia Convergence,” to launch the new Academic Alliance. The panel discussion—which includes Keith Krumwiede, CCA’s dean of Architecture; Sophia Zelov, development lead at Autodesk Technology Centers; and Rick Rundell, senior director at Autodesk Technology Centers—will consider the future of learning with best practice examples from CCA’s Architectural Ecologies Lab & Digital Craft Lab projects hosted at the Autodesk Technology Center in San Francisco.

The Academic Alliance further cements Autodesk Technology Centers’ ongoing work with CCA Architecture. Since 2014, Autodesk Technology Centers have hosted CCA design research ranging from the AEL Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab breakwater project and Presidio Culvert Reef oyster restoration project, to the DCL research projects speculating on the design of Future Factories and the National Science Foundation Grant on developing Wave Tunable Materials for Complex Freeform Structures.

During 2019 and 2020, the Technology Center in San Francisco offered an opportunity to forty DCL Architecture and Interior Design students of tranSTUDIO at CCA to work in the state-of-the-art facility as residents in the Autodesk Technology Centers Outsight Network, providing a change in the way students learn, think, and make innovative designs.

The Academic Alliance builds upon this advanced design research to formalize opportunities for CCA students whose interests align with the Architecture Ecologies Lab or Digital Craft Lab. In the past year, the Outsight Network has expanded to have a global online presence; resident teams now represent over 20 different countries and have access to a diverse and innovative community and subject matter expertise through digital platforms. The Academic Alliance creates a unique opportunity for the CCA Architecture Division to host and collaborate with scholars from international academic institutions while they are pursuing research within the Outsight Network, and for interested students in the Master of Advanced Architecture Design program—CCA Architecture’s one-year interdisciplinary post-professional degree program tailored for advanced students and mid-career professionals—to integrate their area of research with support from both the physical and digital resources of the Autodesk Technology Centers.

About Autodesk
Autodesk makes software for people who make things. If you’ve ever driven a high-performance car, admired a towering skyscraper, used a smartphone, or watched a great film, chances are you’ve experienced what millions of Autodesk customers are doing with our software. Autodesk gives you the power to make anything. For more information visit autodesk.com or follow @autodesk.

About CCA Architecture
Architecture students at California College of the Arts are challenged to be creative and visionary. Across four academic programs and five research and teaching labs, they design with aesthetic, social, and environmental issues in mind, producing work that links image to identity, form to performance, and order to equity.

CCA believes that architecture and interior design are critical cultural practices that can and should serve the common good. Architecture at CCA is an arena for the free and open exchange of ideas about the future—of our buildings, cities, and planet—and a laboratory where these ideas are tested through speculative architectural research. CCA Architecture students challenge conventional ideas at every turn in an innovative culture of making that weds discipline-specific skills and knowledge to emerging technical and conceptual methods.

CCA’s Architectural Ecologies Lab serves as a platform for collaborative research between designers, scientists, and manufacturers. This interdisciplinary setting provides the tools to address ecological challenges like sea level rise, habitat restoration, and climate change. The Digital Craft Lab features experimental making through emerging technologies. Advanced computation, robotics, responsive environments, and rapid prototyping are motivations to reconsider how architecture is produced. Read more about CCA Architecture and the division’s four teaching and research labs at cca.edu/architecture.