KDI Exchange: Just Say No: Determining When and When Not to Design

Malini Srivastava, AIA, DDes, is a licensed architect in the state of Minnesota, associate professor in resilient and regenerative design, and director of the Masters of Science in Research Practices program in the College of Design. Her work spans research, teaching, and practice in urban-scale pervasive play frameworks, high-performance architecture, responsive building skins and other interventions to address energy use in the built environment. To support her practice, she maintains certification as a passive house consultant. Malini is the co-principal of the award-winning firm, Dandelab and project lead of efargo, a university-city-utility partnership aimed at reducing city-wide energy use. Her extensive involvement with architectural projects has led to national and regional awards for design, preservation and efficiency, LEED certification, Passive House pre-certification and a Committee on the Environment National Top Ten Environmental building award. She is a 2018 recipient of the American Institute of Architects’ Young Architect Award and a 2014 recipient of the Archibald and Edyth Bush Fellowship. In 2017, Malini received the Outstanding Educator Award from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at NDSU. She received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and MArch from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Carol Strohecker is a professor at the University of Minnesota and former dean of its College of Design. She has published and presented widely on topics related to learning theory and the development of environments in which people can learn through creative processes. Her works in interactive media resulted in four U.S. patents for computational methods. Before coming to Minnesota, Carol served as vice provost of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and as the inaugural director of the University of North Carolina’s Center for Design Innovation (CDI). Previously she conducted research on learning environment design and technology-enhanced learning at Media Lab Europe (the European partner of the MIT Media Lab) and MERL (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs). She has served as an advisor for various programs of the European Commission and the US National Science Foundation. She also co-founded the NSF-funded global Network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts, and Design (SEAD), through which she advocated for supporting transdisciplinary collaboration. A former Executive Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an Arts Management / Research Fellow at the US National Endowment for the Arts, Carol has taught at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art), Media Lab Europe, Learning Lab Denmark, CDI, and Harvard GSD. She studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she received the Master of Science in visual studies and the PhD in media arts and sciences.