I had the opportunity to deliver a series of talks on ‘Computational Design Thinking’ in three leading Architecture schools in Chennai; SRM School of Architecture, Crescent School of Architecture, and Rajalakshmi Engineering College.

The talks focused on how capacities of computational design are fully unfolded by effectively exercising computational thinking in design practice. My approach was to keep it simple and appealing to a crowd of young architecture students. I had based this talk on some of the research work I was part of in NUS, Singapore, and a few interesting architecture design projects I was part of. The idea was to give an overview of how we can leverage computational design thinking effectively in both research and practice. Some of the topics I had covered in the 90-minute talk were:

• Role of computational designers in the AECO industry

• How different are computational designers from architects?

• Leveraging computational design for augmented design exploration

• Design automation

• ROI of technology for small, medium and big firms

• The future of architecture research & practice