U + ME : Inclusive Discourses and Integrated Embodiment

A dynamic pedagogical shift in CCA’s interdisciplinary studio curricula is exemplified by the class: U+ME: Inclusive and Integrated Embodiment. Within this interdisciplinary design studio environment, the complex interaction between the body and our material/digital environments is approached through a frame of Universal Design. The studio explores the evolution of the physicality of the body, it’s adaptability to our environments/climate utilizing advanced interfaces of AI, VR, AR and robotics.

As has been readily acknowledged, we are witnessing quantum leaps in 21st c. technological, biological, genomic and hybrid developments arguably holding the promise of advancements for embodied spatial experiences in our built environments. These developments hold implicit refutations and challenges to architecture, interior environments, designed objects and principles of social justice.

Embedded dialogues (interchanges) amongst buildings, public/private spaces and their users insist on the realization that these symbiotic relationships are constantly restructuring our physical and cognitive abilities and cultural understandings.

Universal Design advances and expands the very definition of how our bodies will be framed and rendered within built environments. This practice was originated as an agent of change, promising multi-dimensional embodiments of our physical and augmented potentialities. From the evolutionary genesis of the Disability Rights movement of 1960’s Berkeley CA, to the present, robo models engineered by the imagineers of Silicon Valley and MIT – our scrutinized bodies undergo an augmented looping of platform realities contextualized within the shifting frames of space and time rendering our bodies, subject to the inherent tensions of unrelenting contestations.