Matthew Allen, a senior lecturer at the WashU Sam Fox School, collaborated with Theodora Vardouli, of McGill University, to organize “Biographies of the Digital,” a two-day conference at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. Andrew Witt, the Kavita and Krishna Bharat Professor at the Sam Fox School and at WashU McKelvey Engineering, was among the presenters.
Supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the conference took place May 7 and 8. It invited an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine, rekindle and expand biography as a vital methodology in design and technology studies. Witt’s presentation examined the large personal archive of polymathic designer Buckminster Fuller and showed how this archive can be reframed as biographic data visualization.
Founded in 1979, the CCA is an international research institution and museum premised on the belief that architecture is a public concern. The SSHRC, founded in 1977, is a government-funded research agency that aims to train the next generation of talented, creative thinkers and doers; build knowledge and understanding about people, cultures and societies; and drive the innovations that address the challenges of today and tomorrow
Read more on the Sam Fox School website.
