KMDI Speaker Series: Rob Woodbury

Alternatives: A New Fundamental Structure for Computer-aided Design
The act of designing is to explore in a space of possibilities. Designers make many representations on their way to a design that satisfies them. The iconic sketchbook, in pencil (or ink) remains the principal tool for exploration. In stark contrast, current computer aided design (CAD) tools provide little exploration support (though this is growing) especially in the academic literature. CAD provides relentless single-state systems that bias strongly to working with one model at a time, clever workarounds such as using layers for alternatives notwithstanding. In this talk Professor Woodbury will discuss his recently developed tool CAMBRIA and associated language SHIRO, which enables users to do rapid sketching and explore over multiple visible and editable alternatives. He will present design arguments for working with alternatives and show how CAMBRIA and SHIRO implement some of these ideas.

Bio: Robert Woodbury BArch (Carleton, Lieutenant Governor’s Silver Medal), MSc and PhD (Carnegie Mellon) has served on the faculty at CMU (1982-1993), Adelaide University (1993-2001), Technical University of British Columbia (2001-2002) and is now at Simon Fraser. He was founding Graduate Program Chair in Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU. From 2005-2008 he was Scientific Director of the Canadian Design Research Network and is currently the Director, Art and Design Practice of the Graphics, Animation and New Media Network. His research is in computational design, visual analytics and sustainability. He has over 150 publications, including his book Elements of Parametric Design. In 2009 he chaired Team North, a Canadian entry to the 2009 Solar Decathlon. In 2008 he was awarded the Innovative Research Award from the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture and the Tee Sasada Award from the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia. In 2000 he won the Stephen Cole the Elder Prize at Adelaide University.  He is a former Olympian in sailing.