2024 Spring Panel Discussion Season
AI and the Design Community
Moderated by
Amanda Buckley
Tuesday March 26, 2024// 6:30 pm
Discover the profound impact of AI on the AEC industry in an insightful discussion with experts from a variety of disciplines and focus areas. Explore how AI is reshaping the built environment and influencing our professional perspectives. Join us as seasoned professionals share firsthand experiences, providing valuable insights into the evolving dynamics of our roles. This event is a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the intersection between traditional practices and innovative AI solutions, shaping the future of the AEC profession.
Panelists:
Samantha Flores; AIA, RID; VP / Director of Hugo, Corgan
Clifton Harness; Co-Founder, TestFit
Joshua M. Nason; Assoc. Professor, UTA CAPPA
Amanda Buckley serves as Principal and Chief Marketing Officer at OMNIPLAN, playing an instrumental role in steering the firm’s trajectory towards innovation and sustained success. She shapes firm-wide marketing and business development initiatives, fostering successful client relationships and engaging all team members in these efforts. Her commitment to developing a collaborative culture underscores her belief in the collective strength of the entire team. Through strategic initiatives, she enhances the firm’s market presence and cultivates an environment where every member plays a vital role in the realization of the firm’s objectives. Her visionary approach aligns marketing efforts with business goals and instills a sense of unity, ensuring that the OMNIPLAN brand reflects the firm’s values, ethos, and commitment to excellence.
Samantha Flores, AIA, RID is Vice President and Director of Hugo, Corgan’s innovation and research team which focuses data-driven design around the human experience, examining the various impacts emerging technologies and evolving human behaviors will have on the future user experience and built environment. Hugo provides a platform for Corgan to explore, experiment, and develop products with experts from various industries. Samantha has pioneered human-centered design research around intuitive wayfinding, olfactory architecture, and age simulation, and has developed investigatory publications such as the Curiosity Report series.
Clifton Harness, Co-Founder of TestFit, loves to build—buildings & now companies. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Architecture. Soon after joining a real estate development company as an architect, Clifton started working with college roommate Ryan Griege after hours to innovate deal processes, which soon grew into TestFit, an AI-driven real estate feasibility platform that assists developers, architects and contractors in maximizing site potential. An overarching goal is to use AI automation to optimize the development of quality communities.
Joshua M. Nason is an Associate Professor and the Assistant Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. He directs the experimental design research collaborative Iterative Studio. With undergraduate and graduate degrees from Texas Tech and Cornell, Nason teaches courses in architectural design, making, mapping, urbanism, theory, and design-build. Nason co-edited Chasing the City: Models for Extra-Urban Investigations. Nason is editor of the forthcoming book, K-Rob at 50, (for AIA Dallas) and is hosting and producing, “Drawing Conclusions,” a podcast investigating pressing questions of architectural representation.
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