STEAM Approach for Architecture Education

Abstract

This is the first volume, of three, of the Proceedings of the 37 th eCAADe and the 23 rd SIGraDi Conferences, held as a Joint Event from 11-13 September 2019 at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, in Portugal. The three volumes together contain the 221 accepted papers that are also available digitally at CumInCAD (Cumulative Index of Computer Aided Architectural Design) -http://papers.cumincad.org Theme"We stand on the brick of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be unlikely anything humankind has experienced before. " Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, 2015 Looking for confronting the discipline of Architecture with the most critical topics nowadays, the eCAADe SIGraDi Conference 2019 was dedicated to the theme of: Architecture in the Age of the 4 th Industrial RevolutionGoing back in history, the 1 st Industrial Revolution occurred between the 18th and 19th centuries, when water and steam power led to the mechanization period. By then, social changes radically transformed cities and, together with manufactured materials like steel and glass, promoted the emergence of new building design typologies like the railway station. In the end of the 19th century, the advent of electrical power triggered mass production systems. This 2 nd Revolution affected the building construction industry in many ways, inspiring the birth to the modern movement. For some, standardization emerged as an enemy of arts and crafts, while, for others, it was an opportunity to embrace new design agendas, where construction economy and quality could be controlled in novel ways. More recently, electronics and information technology fostered the 3rd Revolution with the production automation. In vi | eCAADe 37 SIGraDi 23 -PREFACE -Volume 1 architecture, the progressive use of digital design, analysis and fabrication processes started to replace the traditional means of analogical representation. This opened the door for the exploration of a higher degree of design freedom, complexity and customization. The rise of the Internet also changed the way architects communicated and promoted the emergence of global architectural practices in the planet.Today, in the beginning of the 21th century, we are in a moment of profound and accelerated changes in the way we perceive and interact with(in) the world, which many authors, like Klaus Schwab, do not hesitate to call as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Extraordinary advancements in areas like mobile communication, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, nanotechnology, biotechnology, facial recognition, robotics or additive manufacturing are fusing the physical, biological and digital systems of production. Such technological context has triggered a series of disruptive concepts and innovations, like the smart-phone, social networks, online gaming, internet of things, smart materials, interactive environments, personal fabri...