The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Molly Steenson (American Swedish Institute), will be giving a talk titled "How Architects Generated Generativity"
Abstract
How can we understand generative AI through the lens of architectural history? Beginning in the 1960s, architects collaborated with AI researchers and engineers, referencing writings about AI in their work on systems that generate systems. In this talk, Molly Wright Steenson traces the conceptual roots of generative AI in the 1960s–80s work of Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Nicholas Negroponte, Cedric Price, and others, in work that draws from archival research in architecture and AI. How might our approach to building generative systems change if we understand them as part of a longer conversation between architecture and AI?
Biography
Dr. Molly Wright Steenson is President/CEO of the American Swedish Institute and Honorary Consul for Sweden for Minnesota and four other states. She is an author and former academic whose focus for 20 years has been the intersection of architecture, design, and AI. She is the author of Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT Press, 2017), which traces the history of AI and computation in design and architecture, and co-editor of Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press, 2019).
From 2015–25, Dr. Steenson was at Carnegie Mellon University as the Vice Provost for Faculty, the K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies, Associate Professor in the School of Design, and Senior Associate Dean for Research for the College of Fine Arts. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, associate professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Ivrea, Italy, and a web and UX pioneer starting in 1994, Dr. Steenson worked at groundbreaking design studios, consultancies, and Fortune 500 companies including Netscape and Reuters.
Dr. Steenson holds a PhD in Architecture from Princeton University, a Master’s in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture, and a BA in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with honors and distinction.
