SF writer Vernor Vinge and architect Niall McLaughlin will speak about Science Fiction Meets Architecture: Designing for an Aging Population as part of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination’s “London in 2080” debate series on June 29. The event begins in UCSD’s Atkinson Hall Auditorium at 10:30 a.m.

As life expectancy increases and modern medicine changes the health and vitality of those in their 80s and 90s, there will be major changes in the design of space as the London population ages. Cognitive impairment will also be more widespread.

• Vernor Vinge has won five Hugo Awards, including one for each of his last three novels, Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and

Rainbow’s End (2006). Known for his rigorous hard-science approach to his science fiction, he became an iconic figure among cybernetic scientists with the publication in 1981 of his novella “True Names,” which is considered a seminal, visionary work of Internet fiction and cyberspace. Dr. Vinge is Emeritus professor of mathematics and computer science and also noted, among other things, for introducing the term “the singularity.”

• Niall McLaughlin is an architect, and educator. Niall won Young British Architect of the Year in 1998. He was named as one of the BBC’s Rising Stars in 2001 and his work represented Britain in a US exhibition Gritty Brits at the Carnegie Mellon Museum. Niall was made a Honorary Royal Designer for Industry (2015) and he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale Architettura 2016. Peabody Housing (Whitechapel 2015), and Somerville Student Residence (Oxford 2010). He is currently working on museum designs for the Natural History Museum in London and Auckland Castle in Durham. Niall is Professor of Architectural Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He was a visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles from 2012-2013, and was appointed Lord Norman Foster Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale for 2014-2015. Niall lives in London with his wife Mary, son Diarmaid and daughter Iseult.

The Debate Series is free and open to members of the public.

Sci-Fi Meets Architecture is a new forum for cross-disciplinary visions and debate at UCL and UCSD. Curated by: Prof David Kirsh (UCSD, San Diego), Prof Alan Penn (The Bartlett, UK), and Ava Fatah (Architectural Computation Programme, The Bartlett School of Architecture). Sponsored by the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, The Bartlett School of Architecture, and The Leverhulme Trust.