Digital Property: Open-source Architecture

About Antoine PiconWendy W. Fok

Antoine Picon is the G Ware Travelstead Professor of  the History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard GSD. He works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the 18th century to the present. In his book La Ville territoire des cyborgs (Editions de l'lmprimeur 1998) he began to investigate the changes brought to cities and architecture by the development of digital tools and digital culture. His three most recent books - Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Profession (Birkhauser  2010); Ornament:The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity (John Wiley & Sons2013); and Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence (Wiley 2015) - deal extensively with this question. He received science and engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees an architecture degree from the Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Villemin and a PhD in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Wendy W Fok is the creative director/ founder of WE DESIGNS which provides creative strategies for the built environment as well as Resilient Modular Systems a socially missioned venture and public-benefit corporation that focuses on innovative modular components using hybridised composite materials for the building industry. Her awards include the Autodesk® Pier 9 AiR (2016) Young CAADRIA Award (2015) Digital Kluge Fellowship awarded by the Library of Congress (2014- 15) the Art Directors Club of New York's ADC Young Guns 11 Award (2013) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Dallas 'Express Yourself' Women in Architecture Award (2013). She has a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a  Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Barnard College Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons and completed her Doctor of Design at the Harvard GSD. Her doctoral research investigates computational innovation the ethical/equitable application of technical methods of digital fabrication and issues of intellectual property law within ownership and authorship property rights for the built environment.