How can the architectural discipline engage in a conversation about automation in our contemporary world? In the last decade, the conversation on automation and robots in architecture has been primarily dominated by a discussion about the capabilities of the tool to facilitate procedures or to create novel formal vocabularies.These predominantly technical conversation just rarely touches on the larger issues at hand, as to how automation might change aspects of cultural, social and political discourse in the architectural discipline.. 

The world is increasingly complex. Design methodologies and pedagogies need to up their game, become more dexterous, and savvy. Locating post-disciplinary questions by de-simplifying the mechanics of engagement. Learning outside the institution. The University increasingly feels the pressure to compete with parallel, often more robust and influential forms of education.

The renewed Culture Wars will continue discharging the regimes of fitness and ableism presiding over architectural discourse. The attributes of performativity and anthropocentrism are replaced with a more radical conception of alterity. 

Over the past 25 years, a substantial event that transformed Taubman College was the initial $30M gift, and $12.5M for the new addition, from our benefactor, Mr. Taubman. Philanthropy impacts education, scholarships, faculty research, and innovation. The philanthropic landscape is shifting. A significant percentage of current and future alumni base is in Asia. Looking to the future, this demographic represents a tremendous and vastly more distributed donor base. Philanthropy in countries like China is increasing, and is having an impact on our capacity to deliver innovative teaching and research. With the exciting appointment of Cynthia Radecki as the new Assistant Dean for Advancement, the College has an opportunity to sharpen efforts on developing new funding models. One pressing concern is the cost of education, and what financial models will enable Taubman to make our program more equitable, or even financially possible, especially for more precarious students, and including international students. What financial models need to be addressed to maintain competiveness in attracting new, and retaining current faculty?

Architecture and urban planning are part of the mainstream discourse of k-12 education, yielding to an equitable representation of different identities in the school and profession in general. 

Technologically-enabled, sociopolitically-engaged, environmentally-mindful, and visually-luring, representation is already a critical component in our curriculum playing as a driver for critical thinking and forming a distinctive Taubman College "brand."

What do we need to nurture this area of shared interests? Could it expand its realm of operation to planning in a more integrated way? 

What is next? 

Taubman College should take leadership by reinvigorating the Spatial Analysis and Visualization Lab, expanding engagement in the campus-wide Urban Collaboratory, seeking external funding for collaborative research, and exploring targeted hires. This work should emphasize values distinctive to our fields, such as aesthetics, design innovation, and social equity.

As the means and methods of design and materialization employed in the design and construction sectors continue to advance toward a near future of intelligent material systems, how does architectural education prepare students to learn, collaborate, and innovate across disciplines?

In an age of intelligent machines, where the necessities of optimization and efficiency demand (?) new approaches like machine learning and artificial intelligence, the ability to understand the limitations, extend the capabilities, and contextualize the implications of emerging methods of design and making becomes critical.

How do we provide a broad design education while enabling the specialization that innovative thinking requires?

Initiate a visible research program for Taubman College that publishes conference proceedings, occasional papers, and small books (in print and in electronic form) on topics that push the edge of the current state of disciplinary knowledge and research.

Thinking ahead toward the next twenty years or so I think that Taubman College could do well to explore the possibility to assist with other partners in re-introducing a Geography program at U of M.  A step toward that would be to work with others to introduce a upper-division undergraduate program straddling LSA and Taubman in urban studies.  If Taubman takes the lead in this effort, we could set the agenda.  This effort would involve working with Residential College, perhaps Public Health, and the former SNRE, in addition to Organizational Studies, PICS [?], Sociology, and more.