:::R[e]thinking Academic Series goes to Manama in Bahrain:::

The Department of Civil Engineering & Architecture, College of Engineering from the University of Bahrain organizes the 4th ASCAAD Conference to be held on May 11-12 in Manama, Bahrain.

This year ASCAAD (Arab Society for Computer Aided Architectural Design) congress is focusing in Digitizing Architecture: Formalization & Content. 

CAAD is constantly provoking and raising many potentials, challenges and arguments in academia and practice, and even in the theory of architecture itself. This process starts with the pedagogy of designing and the ongoing questions such as how much of CAAD should be incorporated in teaching, and ends with digital design technologies and the new emerging questions such as how biologically inspired computational processes alter the form of our architecture and the typical design process.

Architecture originates from people's needs and beliefs. The new forms of digital architecture generate debates in terms of various important issues, ranging from emotional and social factors to sustainability and warming climate. 

The focus area of the conference can be shaped, as follows: considering all these potentials, challenges, and arguments, which we have to benefit from and cope with, are there truly legitimate concerns about the future of our architecture and its content in particular from human and environmental dimensions? Can we develop our own ways of benefiting from the technology that cater to our environment and culture? Can we still see the form of architecture in the traditional way or should we change our perspectives? In other words the conference concentrates on bridging between the new digital form and the traditional human content.

I will present material for oral presentation and proceedings from a case study held last year at the Escuela de Arquitectura in Universidad Anahuac. I really look forward to it.