Reinventing the Design & Construction of Buildings

Challenge to students from all departments -- Making buildings is still painfully laborious and expensive. Can you radically rethink how buildings are designed and constructed? This project-based course balances theory, research, design. We will 1) study why/how Architecture and Construction industry are lagging behind other industries, 2) work with leading professionals to analyze roadblocks preventing them from building cheaper, faster, better, and 3) develop solutions to tackle these problems and advance the industry. You will consider questions such as: Why does it take 6-9 months to build a single family home? Can AI accelerate the architectural design process? How can designers leverage data/IoT? Which new materials offer significant savings and can be adopted for global solutions? Where can the supply chain be optimized? How can we design new technologies that tradesmen and luddites will use? The course is two terms (Winter CEE 229A, Spring CEE 229B).