Constance Vale

Constance Vale is the chair of undergraduate architecture and an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She previously taught at SCI-Arc and the University of California, Los Angeles. Her creative activity and research engages interdisciplinary intersections between architecture, art, theater, urban design, and emerging technology. In her writing and creative practice, she interrogates how artificial intelligence and computational methods of representation are transforming architectural theory and practice. In her collaborative research with computer scientists, she examines how the built environment can respond to autonomous agents, artificial intelligence, and machine vision in ways that improve public health and safety, encourage equitable access throughout cities, and support climate resilience. Vale is also a registered architect and a co-founder and partner at AVV A, llc, who bridges her research into practice, building residences, cultural projects, and theater sets.

Vale is the editor and a co-author of the Graham Foundation-supported book, “Mute Icons & Other Dichotomies of the Real in Architecture” (Actar, 2021), with Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich. The symposium Decoys and Depictions: Images of the Digital, which Vale led in the fall of 2019, builds upon this research. In her forthcoming publication “Digital Decoys: An Architectural Index of Deceptions” (Actar), Vale has been developing her scholarship, focusing on how computational images in architecture, particularly those produced by or for artificial intelligence, are effectively changing architecture theory, design methods, construction, communication, and modes of sociopolitical action.

In tandem with her writing, Vale is collaborating with WashU Professor Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, in the McKelvey School of Engineering, on The Architectural Design of a Testing Platform for Autonomous Driving. The 1:8 scale WashU Mini City project stages the testing of a miniature fully autonomous vehicle (AV). The project aims to improve the safety of AVs and to speculate on the future design of cities, transit architecture, and transportation networks in light of autonomous mobility. The project has been funded by the Center for Trustworthy AI in CPS National Science Foundation Grant as well as WashU’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Provost Office Interdisciplinary Research Grants. In 2020, Vale also curated the related Kemper Art Museum Teaching Gallery exhibition, “The Autonomous Future of Mobility,” which examines the legacy of automobiles over the past century, predominantly in the U.S., as depicted in art and visual culture, offering a view toward the challenges of today’s emerging technological developments.

Notable in her practice, Vale is among the architects recently selected to be included in the international housing project On Olive. As the winner of the On Olive Local Emerging Architect Competition, Vale’s design has been commissioned by Emily Rauh Pulitzer and will be constructed in St. Louis’s Grand Center neighborhood in the Tatiana Bilbao Estudio designed comprehensive plan alongside Atelier Cory Henry, Michael Maltzan Studio, MOS Studio, Höweler + Yoon, Productora Studio, Macias Peredo, and Tatiana Bilbao Estudio. The project has been initiated and led by Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Owen Development. In 2015, Vale collaborated with Emmett Zeifman to complete a temporary pavilion in downtown Los Angeles for The Industry’s experimental opera “Hopscotch.”

Vale is a MacDowell Fellow and Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellow and has received the Emerson Award for Teaching Excellence. Her work has been exhibited at the A+D Museum, The Sheldon Galleries, and the Farrell Learning & Teaching Center, and published in the Los Angeles Times, Architect Magazine, Archinect, CLOG, among others. Vale earned a Master of Architecture from Yale School of Architecture, where she received the Moulton Andrus Award for Excellence in Art and Architecture and two Feldman Nominations, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design. She has practiced at nationally and internationally recognized offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Pittsburgh.