FEW Workshop Proposal: Defining the Opportunities and Challenges for Research and Design Strategies to Support Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

1559379 Padget, Steven R.This workshop is very different from almost all other NSF workshops in that it has been conceived and organized by architects, who will also lead the on-site workshop activity. The workshop structure incorporates the classical architectural design charrette approach, as well as a kick-off symposium. In the design charrette, groups of student designers will collaborate to propose design solutions for a complex INFEWS-related problem, where INFEWS denotes Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems. The symposium component will bring together researchers from the Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, Economics, and Design Professions for presentations, panels, and discussion groups to explore the interrelations of the social, environmental, economic, and design aspects of INFEWS in the built environment. Symposium panel experts will interact with design students to frame and stimulate design efforts, provide feedback to the students' design concepts, and discuss and evaluate the design outcomes. Workshop objectives include: 1) identifying new and important opportunities for multi-disciplinary research and design in INFEWS-related arenas; 2) examining how recent advances in technology and design can be employed in or adapted to INFEWS-related development and solutions; 3) identifying multi-disciplinary research, design and development challenges, knowledge gaps, and INFEWS-related research needs; and 4) identifying documentation methods to disseminate multi-disciplinary research findings for future design development. This Workshop provides a new paradigm for integrating quantitative and qualitative research (analysis) with design (synthesis) methods. It also affords interdisciplinary design teams a unique opportunity to incorporate input from experts in various aspects of the Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) systems into the prototyping process for tools and products. The interacting components of the Workshop provide a useful feedback loop for the symposium participants and the design teams. The visualization of design ideas from the design charrette will be documented in a publication. A white paper, authored by the workshop steering committee, will summarize symposium results that identify interdisciplinary INFEWS research directions. Workshop activities will be documented and disseminated using various forms of web-presence during and after the Workshop, and the committee will pursue other publication opportunities following the Workshop. Broader Impacts : The two-component Workshop format will be integrated into the educational agenda of many architecture design studios at the University of Kansas as a means to promote undergraduate and graduate research. The workshop will also help galvanize research collaboration among faculty across multiple disciplines and facilitate applied research with design professionals.