Design-based research has a critical role to play in the innovative transformation of the AEC industry and the cities it is responsible for building. But post-secondary institutions must also understand how to operate differently so they can deliver on their responsibility to facilitate this necessary and meaningful change. Toward this end, a new model for on-demand, industry-engaged, design-based research will be presented that couples industry and community generated project opportunities with post-secondary research capacity. This on-demand model is framed as a uniquely interdisciplinary platform that serves a variety of stakeholders in ways that market-based and traditional research models alone are unable to address. A series of projects coming out of SAPL's City Building Design Lab will be briefly discussed including a pilot study for BIM-enabled permitting processes, high-performance building envelopes, and the Green Alley Project.
Joshua M. Taron is the Associate Dean Research and Innovation and an Associate Professor of architecture at the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (SAPL) where he also co-directs the Laboratory for Integrative Design (LID). He is also the scientific director for SAPL's City Building Design Lab located in the former Calgary Central Library Building. His current research focuses on the way in which new modes of automated design, fabrication, and construction can yield new performative effects in the built environment. This work is done in partnership with a variety of disciplines such as computer science, medicine, transportation engineering and city planning. He recently co-authored Designing Out Waste (2019) with Kasper Jensen that explores how digital fabrication can be informed by and enhance the circular economy.
Design-based research has a critical role to play in the innovative transformation of the AEC industry and the cities it is responsible for building. But post-secondary institutions must also understand how to operate differently so they can deliver on their responsibility to facilitate this necessary and meaningful change. Toward this end, a new model for on-demand, industry-engaged, design-based research will be presented that couples industry and community generated project opportunities with post-secondary research capacity. This on-demand model is framed as a uniquely interdisciplinary platform that serves a variety of stakeholders in ways that market-based and traditional research models alone are unable to address. A series of projects coming out of SAPL's City Building Design Lab will be briefly discussed including a pilot study for BIM-enabled permitting processes, high-performance building envelopes, and the Green Alley Project.
