The Columbia Building Intelligence Project is a three-year pilot project designed to explore new collaborative relationships that have the potential to transform the building industry. Each year, the project will run on a three-semester cycle, beginning in the fall with a public symposium that brings together leading experts from various sectors of the industry in an open dialogue about what could be possible in a new future. The symposium will uncover key questions and problems, some of which will be addressed the following spring in the Integrated Design Studio.

The Integrated Design Studio (IDS) is the heart of The Columbia Building Intelligence Project. Based on the theory that we cannot change the future of the industry without transforming the education of our future leaders, IDS breaks down the traditional model of studio education in which 12 students are guided by a single studio teacher for 12 weeks. Instead, through The Columbia Building Intelligence Project, three studios will team up in a dedicated space to explore the complexities of a design problem, with each studio taking a part of the building problem before eventually integrating the full scope of work with the other two studios. These 30-40 students will come together with three of GSAPP’s best faculty members, who will then bring in 3-4 outside experts to share expertise, challenge assumptions and possibly change the basic questions that are asked in studio, offering students a new kind of understanding about how the industry works or could work. The Integrated Design Studio’s model of distributed and coordinated design could be modeled on new forms of digital coordination and concurrent design practices being pioneered by Boeing, for example, but also a wide range of commodity products from automobiles to electronics. The IDS takes place in the fourth semester of the Master of Architecture Program, when students are moving from their core studios to their advanced studios, bringing enough background to make informed contributions and having enough time to integrate their new findings into future work at the School.

During the spring semester in conjunction with the IDS, a second public event will present the IDS work-in-progress, seeking additional input through public debate. During the summer, a small team of students will document and organize the findings from the previous fall and spring, in preparation for a public exhibition held in conjunction with the public symposium in the following fall and a final publication produced at the end of the three-year project. The work of the first year may uncover new questions that could be addressed in years two and three, or perhaps an entirely new set of questions related to the future of the building industry will be explored.