October 20, 2009:

Ann Pendleton-Jullian began her talk by discussing Pacariqtambo, an Incan site built around a clan structure. Each clan was responsible for creating a different part of the wall, and the different personalities of the clans are visible in the types of walls they designed. For her, this highlights the notion of an indivisible ecosystem, in which every bit of work that happens goes back into the system to (hopefully) improve it. She also discussed her extensive travels throughout South America and Asia, studying complex systems with numerous interdependent parts.

Games—and their ability to help us see the relationships between all parts of an ecosystem—are also a topic she is passionate about. She has incorporated game design, analysis and play into the architectural curriculum to help students learn new ways to approach architectural design. Games allow us to bring the real world into the imagined world. She feels that designing and analyzing games helps students actually change the way they think about architecture.

Finally, she used an inverted triangle diagram to highlight the point that that Homo sapien (“human who knows,” the left point of triangle) and Homo faber (“human who makes,” the right point of the triangle) need to be combined with Homo ludens (“human who plays,” the middle point of the triangle) in order to bring imagination into the 21st century.