The publication Towards Media Architecture. Educating the next generation of urban interaction designers around the world includes profiles of 15 programmes, 3 students, and 3 professionals internationally in the field of media architecture and urban interaction design.
It is a first attempt to map this emerging field and inspire a discussion on how these new types of designers can be trained. The publication aims to instigate the debate about the implications of our increasingly hybrid cities and explore how to embed this in education. This publication is an initiative of the MAB Academy, a new initiative from the Media Architecture Biennale, in collaboration with the Urban IxD Learning Community at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
About the MAB Academy
The MAB Academy, launched as a new initiative at the 2020/21 edition of the Media Architectuur Biennale has the goal to contribute to the development of media architecture as an academic and pedagogical field. The aim of the MAB Academy is to support research and teaching in this new and fast-developing field, and to create platforms for the exchange of knowledge around the practices, collaborations and frameworks that shape its educational and academic infrastructures, internationally. The MAB Academy invites creative professionals, academic researchers, students, educators, and program coordinators to explore and exchange experiences, insights, and ideas about and from research, learning, and teaching in the field of media architecture. On our agenda are the following aims, questions, and plans:
Practices
Our aim is to share and disseminate experiences and best practices. We need to address how do we teach the interdisciplinary field of media architecture, what theoretical inspirations, creative methods and research formats are we using? We plan to address this by creating platforms for exchanging knowledge and inspiration, and by articulating our needs and ambitions.
Collaborations
Our aim is to bring together leading academics, practitioners and educators to lead the development of the activities; to develop ad hoc communal tactics for advancing and carving out and strengthening the field. In order to do this, we need to explore if we can work more closely together as a field and simultaneously forge crossovers with adjacent fields (including computer science, urban planning, policy science, social sciences, philosophy and other fields in the Humanities)? We plan to develop a series of activities and communal tactics for carving out and strengthening the field.
Frameworks
We aim to develop the methodological, pedagogical and institutional frameworks needed for the field of media architecture to develop as an academic and professional field. This means we should consider which methodological, pedagogical and institutional frameworks are needed in order to make the field of media architecture grow and blossom, through e.g. funding schemes, different review procedures, curriculum changes, organizational changes, industry involvement? We will formulate longer-term strategies for anchoring media architecture institutionally.