NCBDS 36

Welcome to the 36th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student hosted by the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University in College Station. NCBDS is the only national peer-reviewed venue dedicated to the distribution and discussion of research and teaching on beginning design education.

The wide-ranging events of 2020 and 2021 have brought significant changes to our lives and to the discipline of beginning design education, including the transformation of this year’s conference into a virtual event held over three days from 1-3 April 2021. This website serves as the hub and virtual meeting point for the 36th NCBDS.

The Conference Steering Committee in the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M is grateful to the robust community of scholars that make up NCBDS. It is ultimately because of this community that we are able to gather over 80 scholarly presentations and to publicly broadcast 3 keynote lectures from outstanding figures in our field: Laura Bouwman and Andrew Zago from Bouwman Zago (1 April at 5:30pm CST); Anda French and Jenny French from French 2D (2 April at 5:30pm CST); and Dr. Harriet Harriss, architect and Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture (3 April at 5:30pm CST). These keynote lectures are made possible by a grant from the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research. Additional support for the 36th NCBDS has been provided by the College and Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University.

Please note that the keynote lectures are part of the Department’s Spring 2021 lecture series and so you must pre-register for those lectures separately (at no additional cost). Please click on the Keynotes link in the Zoom Information to pre-register for the keynote lectures.

The 36th NCBDS Conference Steering Committee

Andrew R. Tripp, Weiling He, and James Michael Tate