Study Architecture 
ProPEL Artificial Intelligence Design Practices
Co-Chairs
Tatjana Crossley, Wentworth Institute of Technology
Antonio Furgiuele, Wentworth Institute of Technology
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) with co-hosts Wentworth School of Architecture & Design are pleased to continue the conference partnership dedicated to the intersection of education, research and practice. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Design Practices conference invites faculty, practitioners, and advanced students to explore, propose, or challenge new and existing practices and paradigms in using AI technologies. We welcome innovative approaches at all scales, from individual studies to large-scale systems. The following topics are intended to describe the domains for submission and discussion during the conference. The conference will take place September 25-27, 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts.
At this in-person conference, attendees will gain an increased awareness of research happening in both academia and design practice. The conference will create opportunities for new partnerships, sources of funding, collaborations and critical observations. It will be a chance for both established researchers as well as those looking to enhance their research capabilities, with sessions, breakouts, workshops and networking events.
Hosts
Conference Overview
The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in architecture and design is reshaping design possibilities and practices. AI propels new processes of design and making but also raises urgent questions about creativity, authorship, energy consumption, ethics, and the digital divide. This conference invites architects, designers, educators, researchers, and advanced students to critically examine the potentials and limitations of generative AI across design practices.
Framing AI as a transformative force, discussions center on topics such as computational creativity, new pedagogical models, the ethics of machine learning, emergent tools for addressing complex environmental and resiliency challenges, new modes of interdisciplinary practice, and the evolving workflows across project phases. The conference will also explore underlying frameworks within AI, including data bias, automation, intellectual property, and socio-political implications.
Set against the backdrop of an AI-powered world, this conference asks: How is the role of the architect and designer being redefined? How does the design profession shape AI and its processes? How can we harness AI to continue to augment human creativity, productivity, and optimization, but also design for change and address the social and ecological crises of our time?
AI DESIGN CREATIVITY
Generative Design and Computational Creativity
- Contributions that explore how AI tools are reshaping and optimizing design workflows and vice versa, from concept generation to iterative design processes.
- Research or projects that evidence invention, innovation, or creativity in the use of AI tools and multi-agent systems.
METHODS & PRACTICES
Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Future Practices
- AI models that enable new forms of creative collaboration, project management, and assessment.
- Methods for integrating vernacular practices and community engagement reflecting aesthetics and cultural values.
Ethics, Equity, and Bias
- Design methods and tools engaging AI technologies that responsibly promote equity and social justice, and address data bias.
Environmental Systems, Climate Change, and Resilience
- Contributions that use AI to examine, analyze, and create possibilities that address environmental questions, carbon intensities, climatic changes, and resilient systems.
HISTORY, THEORY & PEDAGOGY
History & Theory of AI in Design
- Historical and theoretical scholarship that highlights insights into AI and machine learning technologies, concepts, and discourses.
Rethinking Pedagogies
- Curricula and pedagogies that engage new types of knowledge and skills to prepare students for AI design practices.
- Examples of how AI enhances learning, aids collaboration, and advances innovation in design education.
Opening Keynote
Antoine Picon
Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard GSD where he is also Chair of the PhD in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and technology. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the relationships between architectural and urban space, technology, and society, from the eighteenth century to the present.
At the intersection of an enduring interest for the history of construction and his research on digital culture in architecture, Picon has developed a theoretical and historical approach to the question of materiality that has led to his book The Materiality of Architecture (2021). How is the digital, the recent rise of artificial intelligence in particular, transforming the materiality of architecture is among his current topics of investigation.
It is almost impossible to work on the history of technology without encountering the question of nature or rather of the relationship between the natural and the artificial. This question is at the core of Picon’s latest book, a history of urban natures from the seventeenth century to the present. Natures Urbaines: Une Histoire Technique et Sociale (2024) follows two main threads: the technological component of the presence of nature in cities as well as its social and political dimension.
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His French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (1988; English translation, 1992) is a synthetic study of the disciplinary deep structures of architecture, garden design, and engineering in the eighteenth century, and their transformations as new issues of territorial management and infrastructure-systems planning were confronted. Whereas Claude Perrault (1613-1688) ou la Curiosité d’un classique (1988) traces the origin of these changes at the end of the seventeenth century, L’Invention de l’Ingénieur Moderne, L’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851 (1992) envisages their full development from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1850s by focusing on the changes experienced by the engineering profession.
Picon has also worked on the relations between space, technology and utopia. This is in particular the theme of Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie (2002), a detailed study of the Saint-Simonian movement that played a seminal role in the emergence of industrial modernity. His interest in utopian thought is actually traceable from his early work to his more recent publications such as his book on cities and nature.
A series of Picon’s books offer a comprehensive overview of the changes brought by the computer and digital culture to the theory and practice of architecture as well as to the planning and experience of the city. He has published in particular Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Profession (2010), Ornament: The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity (2013), Smart Cities: Théorie et Critique d’un Idéal Autoréalisateur (2013), and Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence (2015).
Picon has received a number of awards for his writings, including the Médaille de la Ville de Paris, and twice the Prix du Livre d’Architecture de la Ville de Briey, a well as the Georges Sarton Medal of the University of Gand. In 2010, he was elected a member of the French Académie des Technologies. In 2015, he became a member of the French Académie d’Architecture. He is Chevalier des Arts et Lettres since 2014. He was Chairman of the Fondation Le Corbusier from 2013 to 2024.
Picon received science and engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique and from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, an architecture degree from the Ecole d’Architecture de Paris-Villemin, a PhD in history and a Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
For further information visit Harvard GSD
Friday: Roundtable
AI Computational Creativity & Pedagogy
Roundtable conversations bringing together leading scholars and designers to engage and highlight key figures and critical topics in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning design practices. The first roundtable will focus on AI Computational Creativity & Pedagogy. What currently and may continue to distinguish human creativity from Machine Learning?
Moderator: Ryan Thomas, Wentworth Institute |
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Saturday: Roundtable
AI Practices & Methods
Roundtable conversations bringing together leading scholars and designers to engage and highlight key figures and critical topics in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning design practices. The second roundtable will focus on AI Practices & Methods. What currently and may continue to distinguish human creativity from Machine Learning?
Moderator: George Guida, Harvard University |
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Closing Keynote
Carlo Ratti
An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti works on the future of cities and the built environment. He is a Professor of the Practice of Urban Technologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a Full Professor in the Department of Architecture, Built Environment, and Construction Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. He is a founding partner of the international architecture and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and has established several tech start-ups in the United States and Europe. Ratti graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris and later carried out his MPhil and Ph.D. work at the University of Cambridge – completing his Ph.D. thesis as a Fulbright Scholar at MIT. In December 2023, he was named as Curator of the Venice Biennale Architettura 2025.
One of the top ten most-cited scholars in urban planning, Ratti has co-authored over 750 academic publications. His books include the recent “Atlas of the Senseable City” (Yale University Press, with Antoine Picon, 2023), “Urbanità” (Einaudi, 2022), and “Open Source Architecture (Thames & Hudson/Einaudi, with Matthew Claudel, 2015). He has developed applied research projects in collaboration with companies and local/national governments across five continents. He has written op-eds for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Financial Times, Le Monde, and Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
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He has consulted international bodies from the European Union to the Queensland Government. He was a curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, the Future Food District Pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan, the chief curator at the 8th Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen, and a creative mediator at the European Nomadic Biennale Manifesta 14 Prishtina. Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015) and was program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design in Moscow. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
Ratti’s work has been exhibited worldwide at venues including New York City’s MoMA, the Venice Biennale, the Science Museum in London, Expo 2015 Milan, and Expo 2020 Dubai. His focus on many scales of innovation– from products to buildings to cities – has led CRA to become the only design firm in the world to feature on TIME’s “Best Inventions of the Year” list three different times (2007, 2014, 2019). He has appeared as one of “50 people who will change the world” according to Wired. Fast Company hailed him as one of the “Most Influential Designers in America,” and Blueprint Magazine listed him as one of its “People Who Will Change the World of Design.” Bloomberg dubbed him the “Sensory City Philosopher.”
For further information visit www.carloratti.com
Conference Partners
Questions
Michelle Sturges
ACSA
Conferences Manager
202-785-2324
msturges@acsa-arch.org
Eric Wayne Ellis
ACSA
Sr. Dir. of Operations & Programs
202-785-2324
eellis@acsa-arch.org
