WE

HAVE

NEVER

BEEN

PRE-DISCIPLINARY

The conference is organized into four sections with each section providing a particular vantage upon, and entry into, the terrain demarcated by the complementary notions of disciplinarity and beginnings.   The four sections are:

Beginnings and Disciplinarity

This section will focus on the two ideas -- beginnings and disciplinarity -- that are at the heart of this conference.  Keynote speakers and papers will explore the two as independent constructs  -- each with its own historical, theoretical, and intellectual genealogy -- that are also mutually implicated in a complex set of relationships and qualifications.  Papers within this section may also examine how particular takes on either beginnings or disciplinarity manifest themselves, explicitly or implicitly, in beginning design pedagogies, curricula, and programs. 

Open

This section will provide a forum for the sheer diversity of concerns and approaches that characterize beginning design in the designed and built environment disciplines.  That there sometimes appear to be as many approaches to teaching beginning design as there are designers teaching it could be seen as both a strength and a weakness of beginning design as either a body of knowledge, a set of practices, or both.  Papers and panel discussions within this section will provide a platform for a wide range of voices from the field while leaving open for debate the disciplinary status of beginning design itself.

Beginning Design Programs

The context specificity of beginning design programs, curricula, and pedagogies is rarely given the attention it deserves.  This section will focus on specific beginning design programs developed and established within particular schools and institutions.  The goal is to provide a forum for a comparative as well as a multi-dimensional understanding of beginning design programs.  Papers and panel discussions within this section may address, for example, a particular program in its multiple contexts:  not just its curricular structure and its pedagogical goals and procedures but the logistics of its operation within particular social, institutional, administrative, and budgetary contexts as well.

Beginnings Across the Disciplines

This section will survey the ways in which beginnings are conceived, understood, and implemented in a range of disciplines beyond architecture.  The goal is to present beginnings in all their disciplinary diversity in order to enrich, and complicate, discipline-specific discussions about disciplinarity and beginnings.  Paper and panel discussion sessions will focus on how beginnings are constituted within allied disciplines as well as disciplines that undertake design activity in its broadest sense.  Sessions will also focus on the implications of new cross-disciplinary technologies and models of practice for beginnings and beginning design.