Welcome to FIU School of Architecture Miami Beach Urban Studios!

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How are you using AI in your teaching? What concerns do you have? Who do you want to hear from, and who would your students benefit from engaging with?

Join us for an interactive roundtable where we invite open discussion, share experiences, and explore innovative ways to incorporate AI into the classroom. Bring your questions and ideas as we navigate this evolving landscape together.

Virtual Roundtable Discussion

March 14, 2025 | 10:00 AM

• Faculty-driven conversation for all CARTA disciplines: communication/journalism, architecture/design, and visual/performing arts
• Ready-to-implement teaching strategies
• Graduate and undergraduate-level AI collaboration techniques

The post FIU CARTA Faculty Webinar: AI in the Classroom – Questions, Insights & Strategies appeared first on Miami Beach Urban Studios.

Coastal areas in the US are prone to strong winds, including hurricanes, which can damage roofs. To address this, researchers developed the Aerodynamics Mitigation and Power System (AMPS), which uses wind turbines to reduce wind damage and provide power to buildings. Tests were conducted on a model building at Florida International University’s Wall of Wind Experimental Facility, comparing different AMPS configurations. Results showed that placing the turbines closer to the roof edge significantly reduced wind forces and prevented damage. The AMPS system disrupts swirling winds, further decreasing uplift forces. Future research will explore energy production, effectiveness on different building types, and load transfer.

“Gan Chowdhury A, Moravej M, Zisis I, Irwin P, Tremante A and Hajra B (2019) Mitigation of Aerodynamic Uplift Loads Using Roof Integrated Wind Turbine Systems. Front. Built Environ. 5:10. doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2019.00010”

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The energy was electric as the second TOM FIU Makeathon took place at the SOA Miami Beach Urban Studios on April 1-2, 2023. This extraordinary event brought together the brightest minds from the TOM: FIU Community, a groundbreaking initiative that revolutionizes the way we address unmet physical needs in our local region.

With the support of FIU’s prestigious CARTA Innovation Lab, this collaborative endeavor has extended its reach beyond the boundaries of the university, welcoming all passionate students and members of the community to join forces. Together, they embarked on a quest to create innovative solutions that would transform lives using cutting-edge 21st-century technologies.

Over the course of two exhilarating days, the atmosphere buzzed with creative brilliance, as participants harnessed their unique skills and diverse perspectives to tackle pressing challenges. Brilliant minds collided, sparking a symphony of ideas that promised to reshape the lives of individuals in need. From engineering marvels to groundbreaking medical devices, the projects showcased and created at the TOM FIU Makeathon pushed the boundaries of what was once deemed possible. Thank you all who volunteered and helped our Needknowers!

Delve into the captivating highlights of the 2023 TOM FIU Makeathon! For more information about TOM FIU, click here.

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The post Ongoing Exhibitions appeared first on Miami Beach Urban Studios.

This 2025 lecture series explores the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our world and its future potential. Presented by experts and innovators, CARTA Generative AI Conversations Powered by Reekolect ™ delves into advancements in AI, its intersection with creativity, architecture, technology, and society, and the ethical challenges it poses. Each lecture promises to inspire thought-provoking discussions and insights into how AI is shaping the future.

January 14, 2025 – Neil Leach

January 21, 2025 – Manuel Jimenez García

March 18, 2025 – Panel Discussion

December 4, 2025 – Patrik Schumacher and Refik Anadol in conversation with Neil Leach in Design Miami, Miami Beach

For the most part, the series takes place at 2 PM in PCA 135 at the FIU Modesto Maidique Campus and is free and open to the public.

Neil Leach

FIU Architecture Professor/ DDES

Neil Leach is an architect and interdisciplinary scholar, serving as a professor at FIU, a Visiting Professor at Harvard GSD and Tongji University, and a Professor at the European Graduate School. A NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Fellow and Academia Europaea member, he has taught at top institutions like SCI-Arc, Cornell, Columbia GSAPP, and USC. He holds an MA and Dip Arch from Cambridge and a PhD from Nottingham. The author of 27 books translated into multiple languages, he has strong ties to China, where he is a distinguished Visiting Professor. He has also curated major exhibitions, including for the Architecture Biennial Beijing. Learn more about Neil and his practice here.

Learn more about Neil Leach’s lecture and watch the recording here.

View Video Transcript

Manuel Jiménez García

CEO / Co-founder of Nagami

Manuel Jiménez García is the co-founder of the robotics manufacturing company Nagami.Design (3D printing) based in Spain and principal of madMdesign, a computational design practice based in London. His work has been exhibited worldwide in venues such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Canada´s Design Museum (Toronto), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Zaha Hadid Design Gallery (London), Clerkenwell Design Week (London) and X Spanish Architectural Biennale (Madrid). Learn more about Manuel and Nagami.Design here.

Learn more about Manuel Jiménez García’s lecture and watch the recording here.

View Video Transcript

Panel Discussion

Daniel Bolojan, FAU

Joseph Choma, FAU

Smaro Katsangelou, FAU

Lorena Knesevic, FIU

Neil Leach, FIU

Lars Lerup, Formerly Rice

John Stuart, FIU

A thought-provoking panel discussion exploring the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on architectural education. Esteemed scholars and practitioners will delve into how AI is reshaping design processes, pedagogy, and the future of the profession. Panelists include Daniel Bolojan, Assistant Professor and the Director of the Creative AI Lab (FAU), Joseph Choma, Director of the School of Architecture and Professor of Architecture (FAU), Smaro Katsangelou, PhD candidate in Architecture, AI & Robotics at FAU, Lorena Knesevic, DDes candidate in Architecture, AI, AR, and VR at FIU, Neil Leach, Professor, moderator (FIU), Lars Lerup, Former Dean of Architecture, Rice University, and John Stuart, Distinguished University Professor (FIU).

Learn more about the panel discussion and watch the recording here.

View Video Transcript

Panel Discussion with

Neil Leach, moderator

Patrik Schumacher

Refik Anadol

at 2025 Design Miami, Miami Beach

2025 Design Miami panel discussion

“Architecture in the Age of AI”

AI has been unleashed. Nothing is going to be quite the same again.

This session brings back together two of the original pioneers in the field of AI and Architecture, RefikAnadol and Patrik Schumacher. Anadol is one of the leading voices in the world of AI and Media Art, while Schumacher is the principal of one of the most progressive architecture practices in the world, Zaha Hadid Architects. Over the past 5 years, they have collaborated on a series of projects and generated the first GAN–produced and the first diffusion model–produced architectural designs.

In this session, they come back together to reflect on what has happened in the 5 years since their original collaborations, and to predict what will happen in the next 5 years.

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An archive of our previous Exhibitions:

SOA MBUS Galleries:

2025

• Shattered Structures: Looking Back 15 Years to the Earthquake in Haiti
• The Brightest

2024

• Fascination with Forms: The Architecture of Jesús & Ana Tenreiro
• American Institute of Architects: 2024 Students’ Awards
• The Unreading Room
• THE COSTUME IS NOT A COVER
• Mending Body and Soul Exhibition
• Flip Tricks: A Skateboarding Exhibition
• The Machine in the Garden
• Because You Lived: Installation by Karla Kantorovich
• All that we _ has / Cutout
• Looking up to Milan Housing
• Divergence by Yves Gabriel

2023

• Work Table(au)
• Responses: Paintings by Pip Brant
• By A Thread
• BFA In Digital Arts 2023 Graphic Design
• SoBe Alleyways
• #CAN1872P Exhibition by Tom Scicluna
• Reflecting Black to the Future: Celebrating Emancipation and Freedom by Dr. Valerie Patterson
• Makes & Matrices: Art by Rhea Leonard
• War and Hope in Ukraine: The Power of Art
• Mama, G-Ma, and Nana: Diamonds in the Sky
• Hidden Stories of the Holocaust
• Uproot
• On Paper

2022

• Refusenik
• Mirrors of Light
• Tan Lejos y Tan Cerca
• Sobe Alleyways
• Forms in the Garden
• Rails, Roads and Rooftops
• How Do We Live
• Emergent
• Final_Render2022.PSD
• Leisure
• Time Space Existence
• Wayward Eye

Miami Beach Visual Arts Gallery:

• The Brightest
• Unravelling Uniformity
• Textura Obscura
• Kaypi, Chaypi, Wakpi
• Absurdeity
• Works from the FIU Student Archive 1975 to the Present
• We Are the Places We Left Behind
• Unfold
• Excavating Fragments: The Mixed Media Art of John Colon
• Instructive Imprints
• In Transparent Color
• Uprooted Memories: Echoes of Our Past
• Musings

CARTA Mana Wynwood Gallery:

• Living With Water: Ancient Knowledge, Designing Our Future
• Tierra Media Project
• Calle Zafiro 10 | pop-up
• Landscape Typologies
• Pages From the Book of Hours | pop-up

Looking for a recorded art talk? Click here!

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An archive of all our previously recorded SOA MBUS Art Talks:

2024

• Miami Artist Census
• Iryna Kanishcheva & Monochronicle

2023

• Kern Myrtle
• Lauren Shapiro

2022

• Ari Temkin
• Nico
• Anna Goraczko
• Edison Penafiel
• Coulter Fussell
• William Maguire
• Aramis O’Reilly
• Ian Melgarejo
• Ivan Roque
• Mojo
• The Fonts
• Monika Bravo
• Amy Schissel
• Blane De St. Croix
• Diana Shpungin
• Adler Guerrier
• Adrian Avila
• Will Gabaldon
• Nick Lobo

2021

• Tracy Linder
• Monica Lopez De Victoria
• Adrienne Chadwick
• Sasha Wortzel
• Letty Bassart
• Eddie Arroyo
• Alessandra Mondolfi
• Ivan Santiago
• Donna Torres
• Jen Clay
• Chire Regans
• Orlando Estrada
• Yves Gabriel
• Devora Perez
• Yi Chen Hsieh
• Gianna DiBartolomeo
• Lisu Vega
• Cole Miller
• Keith Allyn Spencer
• Evelyn Politzer
• Laura Marsh
• Linn Meyers
• Mark Fleuridor
• Chat Travieso
• GeoVanna Gonzalez
• Lorna Galloway
• Aurora Molina

Looking for a previous exhibition? Click here!

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Growlight/Breakthrough Miami is a four-week summer camp held at the Miami Beach Urban Studios that focuses on design, art, technology, urbanism, and public policy around support for those with disabilities.
Growlight is a summer program that provides an intense and enjoyable introduction to architecture and the related disciplines of landscape and interior architecture. Organized by Florida International University’s College of Communication, Architecture + the Arts (CARTA) and Breakthrough Miami, the program takes advantage of the College’s School of Architecture Miami Beach Urban Studios (SOA MBUS) on Lincoln Road to introduce students to the area’s rich cultural context and to use the city as a laboratory in which to study the relationships between design and the built environment. The program focuses on 3D printing, which is integrated into each aspect of the curriculum and allows students to use cutting-edge 3D printing technology to explore design, art, urbanism, and the environment. Led by the passionate and talented Ruben Ilizarbe, an engineering teacher with a knack for fostering creativity, the camp offered students a unique opportunity to explore and develop their interests. Ruben’s leadership, combined with the expert oversight of Jacqui Thompson, CARTA Program Manager, ensured that each participant received personalized guidance and support. Participants spend a considerable portion of each day working on design projects and engaging in group discussions with faculty from FIU’s Department of Architecture. Guest lectures by prominent local practitioners and guided walking tours in Miami Beach enhance the learning experience by demonstrating the impact of design on our world.
Participants spend each day taking three classes that follow the structure of a college design program. The day begins with a class that introduces students to freehand and measured drawing techniques, then proceeds with a course in digital modeling and 3D printing; Students spend the afternoon in a design studio, where they work intensely on design projects that allow them to apply their drawing and modeling skills on small design projects. In keeping with Breakthrough Miami’s philosophy of students teaching students, all three courses are taught by exceptional graduate students in FIU’s CARTA, who work with the students as both faculty and mentors. SOA MBUS has proudly been working with the Breakthrough Summer Camp program since 2014.

Breakthrough Miami is a program that provides first-rate enrichment opportunities to high-achieving students from under-resourced backgrounds.

For photos of the Growlight Breakthrough Miami 3D Design Summer Camp from a previous year, click here.

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The event kicked off with a warm welcome over coffee and donuts in the WPAC Rotunda, setting the stage for a day of creativity and inspiration. A keynote panel discussion followed, where speakers Sam Hyken, Daniel Pezet, Patricio Suarez, and Mabel Morales shared valuable insights into arts education and its role in shaping the next generation of creators.

Attendees then dispersed into specialized sessions tailored to their disciplines. Workshops included “Exploring ORFF Through Color,” “The Confident Audition,” and “Digital Light: Manipulating Images in the Post-Photographic Darkroom,” offering educators fresh techniques and innovative approaches to bring back to their classrooms. Participants engaged in hands-on activities such as crafting digital mandalas, embroidery projects for mindfulness, and photography exercises to uncover new perspectives. The Frost Museum’s Lee Bontecou exhibit inspired educators with creative applications of STEAM principles, blending science and art seamlessly.

Lunch provided a welcome opportunity for networking and reflection before diving into the afternoon sessions. Workshops delved into topics such as costume design, music production techniques, and digital animation, giving educators practical tools and strategies to enhance their teaching and artistic practice.

The day wasn’t just about skills—it was about community, empowerment, and inspiration. By the end of the event, educators left energized, equipped with new ideas to elevate their students’ learning experiences while enriching their own creative journeys.

For a recap in pictures, click here to view the album.

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