NJIT's College of Architecture and Design (COAD) will host a public forum on the changing status of technology in architectural practice and the emerging potential for the role of architecture in the design of the built environment. The NJ Chapter of the American Institute of Architects will sponsor the free event, open to the public, set for Oct. 28, 2009, 1:15 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Noted architects and educators—many from NJIT--will discuss their work as material evidence of emerging forms of contemporary design practice, the various technologies being used, and to what end they are being applied.

COAD Dean Urs Gauchat will provide opening remarks. Other participants will include NJIT Assistant Professors Matt Burgermaster, of MABU Design; Rhett Russo, of Orange Horse, NYC, Richard Garber, of GRO Architects and Douglas Gauthier, of Gauthier Architects, NJIT Associate Professor Gabrielle Esperdy and NJIT Professor Peter Papademetriou. Garber and Burgermaster organized the event.

In recent years, contemporary architecture has been fundamentally changed by the evolution of digital technologies as a mainstream production process, sometimes as a design technique, and even as a way of thinking.

These developments have opened new relationships between previously divergent - and sometimes irreconcilable - terms of material and virtual, representation and production, process and product. Amidst these changes, emerging information and fabrication technologies have acted as a catalyst for disciplinary experimentation with complex form and, more recently, in the realignment of traditional relationships between design and construction. Similarly, they have led to explorations of new models of design integration and professional collaboration.