09/08/18

AMES, Iowa — Wendy W. Fok, founder and creative director of WE-DESIGNS in New York City and Hong Kong and an assistant professor of integrated design at Parsons School of Art and Design, will discuss the future of urban living in a lecture Wednesday, Sept. 19, at Iowa State University.

Fok will present “Fabricating the Future: Urban Living in the Shared Economy” at 5:30 p.m. in Kocimski Auditorium, 101 College of Design. Her talk is part of the ISU Department of Architecture’s 2018-2019 Public Program Series, “Anonymity.”

Physical fabrication — the mandate to “make” — is central to contemporary design education. Just as often as designers, creatives, technologists, policymakers, faculty and students are asked to substantiate their design research with physical products, however, they find opportunities to turn made objects into launching points for truly creative research. Meanwhile, practicing “makers” increasingly blur the distinctions between digital and “conventional” fabrication, as well as the meanings of “research” and “product.”

In her presentation, Fok will discuss the future of urban living and work that is as creative and conscientious as it is accomplished and entrepreneurial.

About the speaker

Fok holds a Bachelor of Arts in architecture and economics from Columbia University; a Master of Architecture with a certificate in urban policy and planning from Princeton University; and a Doctor of Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She was a teaching fellow at the Harvard Law School from 2013-2018. She is the founder of Resilient Modular Systems (RMS) and (C)ODE-(C)OLLECTIVE.

Fok received the Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award in 2009, Perspective 40 Under 40 Award in 2011, ADC Young Guns 11 Award in 2013 and Digital Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress in 2014-2015. She was selected for Autodesk’s Pier 9 Artists in Residence Program in 2016 and named to Autodesk ReMake’s list of 25 Women in Reality Computing in 2017. Her award-winning projects have been exhibited internationally as part of South by Southwest, Venice Biennale, Beijing Design Biennale and Shanghai Expo, among others. She is the co-editor of Digital Property: Open-Source Architecture (Wiley, 2016), which will be available for sale at the Iowa State lecture.

Contacts

Shelby Doyle, Architecture Public Programs Committee, (515) 94-8711, doyle@iastate.edu
Heather Sauer, Design Communications, (515) 294-9289, hsauer@iastate.edu

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