Current: Constructing Curvature

Our human-centered design and construction research places people at the core of structural innovation. Through co-design, we engage stakeholders directly in shaping form. We develop methods to translate human intent, capturing experience, preferences, and qualitative knowledge into measurable criteria that balance carbon impact, structural efficiency, and spatial quality. Working closely with designers, craftspeople, contractors, trade training institutes, we create structures that are inclusive, expressive, and deeply attuned to the human experience.

Our AI research develops physics-informed and constrained methods for the design and analysis of structural systems, linking form, geometry, and mechanical performance. By embedding mechanics into machine learning models, we support inverse design and form-finding processes that remain consistent with governing equations, loading conditions, and constraints. Central to our approach is the human-in-the-loop: designers and engineers actively guide, interpret, and shape the design process leveraging machine learning methods. This synergy between physics, data, and human intuition fosters more creative pathways to structural innovation.

Our research in mechanics focuses on slender structural systems to understand and harness their inherently non-linear behavior. This behavior gives rise to extraordinary mechanical properties, not attainable in more conventional structural systems. These systems derive their properties from geometry and topology, requiring integrated approaches that couple form, force, and material. We develop advanced form-finding methods to discover efficient shapes under given constraints, and apply multi-objective optimization to balance performance, constructability, sustainability and human experience. To validate our concepts and explore real-world behavior, we build experimental prototypes and demonstrators.