On October 29, hundreds of architects and design professionals attended Architectural Record’s annual Innovation Conference, held at the New School. Titled “Igniting Change: How Creativity, Design, and Technology Will Shape the Future,” the event featured a diverse group of speakers with wide-ranging ideas on what constitutes “innovation,” and how to integrate it into practice.
Kicking off the conference, Nader Tehrani, principal of the Boston-based firm NADAAA, spoke about the pedagogical approach of Cooper Union—where he is dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture—to prepare students for professional life in an industry whose relationship to digitization is in a constant state of flux. With a steady stream of new technologies, software quickly becomes outdated. “If we prepare students for today’s workforce, then they will be completely ill-prepared for the field 5 years when they graduate,” said Tehrani. Instead, at Cooper Union, questions are asked in ways to give students space to discover didactive motives through the process of research. According to him, the best way to create an environment ripe for innovation is to encourage young architects to “improvise and be at ease with uncertainty.”
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.