The first part of the lecture will explain the applied research at AKTII and how its in-house research team, a cross-disciplinary group of engineers, architects, computer scientists and parametric designers develops and uses digital tools to inform their design. The lecture will focus on the evolution of computational design within the practice and how it is now fully integrated as a catalyst to enable complex projects. Implemented from early stages, parametric workflow has repeatedly proven to be an efficient approach to manage multidisciplinarity in an interoperable way. The second part of the lecture will use few test cases to showcase the implementation of this design philosophy and illustrate how design, materiality fabrication and construction can come together in the most seamless way. Based on theses case-studies, lessons learned and opportunities for further research will also be highlighted.
Thomas Lejeune joined AKTII in 2016. He has a MEng in Structural Engineering with Architecture from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and a MSc in Modern Building Design from the University of Bath. Thomas is a computational design engineer in p.art, the research team at AKTII. He is strongly interested in holistic design and how computational tools can shape structural engineering and its role within a project. His portfolio of work includes the Sberbank Technopark in Moscow with Zaha Hadid and the Bournemouth Innovation Studio with CRAB Studio.