A conversation with Barry Katz, Professor of Industrial and Interaction Design at the California College of the Arts
Let’s be honest: Silicon Valley is famous for lots of things, but architecture is not one of them. A cluster of recent projects, however, suggests that this may be starting to change. Referencing recent projects at Apple, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, we’ll ask whether this hitherto-nondescript region is at last developing an architecture as innovative as the information technologies they enclose. Think of this as an open-ended conversation more than a lecture.
Images courtesy of Barry Katz
Learning objectives:
- Update on recent projects likely to attract worldwide attention.
- Thoughts on how we may be seeing the emergence of an architectural language specific to the information technology industries.
- Observations on distinguishing elements in the projects under review.
- Speculations (sorry—can’t be much more than that!) on architecture and tech-work in the post-pandemic era.
Presenter, Barry Katz was educated at McGill University in Montréal, the London School of Economics, and holds a doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is Consulting Professor in the Design Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, at Stanford University and Professor of Industrial and Interaction Design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
In addition to his academic affiliations, Barry worked for more than twenty years with IDEO, Inc., the global design and innovation consultancy, where he conducted front-end research in support of IDEO project work. He consults with governments, companies, and academic institutions worldwide on issues pertaining to design and innovation.
Barry is the author of seven books, including Change By Design with Tim Brown, (Harper Collins, 2009/2019), which explores design thinking as a strategy of business; NONOBJECT, with Branko Lukic, (MIT, 2010), a conceptual exploration of “the space between person and product;” and Make it New: The History of Silicon Valley Design (MIT Press, Fall 2015), which has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. A new book, The Architecture of Information: Radical Buildings and Visionary Projects for the Age of Data, is in progress. His writings on design as a strategy of innovation have appeared in many academic, professional, and popular journals.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-katz-58b183/
WeChat ID: BarryKatz
Free Event
5:45-6:oo pm Social Meet & Greet
6:00-7:00 pm Presentation + Discussion