SURROUND

Turning pollution data into planning decisions. TEAM: Martina Simoni , Rim Choufani, Rashi Desadla, Bhavana Priya B INTRODUCTION Kraków’s air quality problem isn’t abstract. It’s measurable, and it’s bad. Over six sessions, our team (Rim, Martina, Rashi, and Bhavana) used the CRISP-DM framework to ask a focused question: can urban form (building density, road networks, … Read more

vo:id

atlas of vacant spaces Urban vacant land in dense, post-industrial cities remains spatially invisible: absent from open datasets despite its potential to address chronic green space deficits. This thesis “vo:id” is a pipeline detecting, classifying, and prioritizing urban voids using only globally covered open data. Combining OSM-based negative masking, vision-language model classification, and human-in-the-loop validation, … Read more

After Gaudi – Facade ll

Site and Key Viewpoint Site and Key Viewpoint Core Project Keywords References FORM FINDING Final Form – Sketch Form Logic Variations and Catalog – Side Profile Form Finding Catalog Base Variation Catalog Convex concave Variation Catalogue Final Form – Levels OPENING & PLANTERS Opening’s Logic – Diamond Shape Opening’s Logics Catalog of Opening Opening Logic … Read more

Garage coders

This blog focuses on Agentic workflow created during the workshop in creating an “IFC Compliance” checking app through different tools like Claude code, Cursor, Github, Gradio, Python and Js. The objective of creating this app was simple and straight to the eye, Create an app that can read the models and replace the conventional method … Read more

Beyond Construction: BIM as a World-Building Tool for Real-Time Game Engines

Abstract This research investigates how Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be leveraged to generate structured and meaningful architectural environments for architectural visualization, video games, and animated films. It explores workflows between BIM tools and real-time game engines, focusing on the transfer and preservation of spatial logic and metadata. The study aims to demonstrate how BIM-based … Read more

Design Beyond the Project: Reframing Practice Through Scalable Digital Services

A conversation with Jesper Wallgren Introduction In recent years, computational design and BIM workflows have become common tools in architectural practice. However, most of these tools remain confined to individual projects, often developed as internal scripts or one-off automation solutions to solve immediate design problems. While effective in improving efficiency within a project, these tools … Read more

Sand Mining – from Afar

DETECTING SAND MINING USING MULTI-TEMPORAL SATELLITE IMAGERY Introduction Sand is ubiquitous in the modern world. It is the second-most extracted material on Earth after water, driven principally by the global demand for concrete, infrastructure, and urban expansion. Estimates place global sand and gravel extraction at 40–50 billion tonnes per year, a scale that outstrips many … Read more

Renewable, but at Whose Cost?

India’s solar ambition is written into its landscape. Since the launch of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in 2010, the country has pursued one of the most aggressive renewable energy expansions in history —targeting 500GW of solar capacity by 2030. But the geography of that expansion follows a troubling logic. The regions chosen for … Read more

The Wooded Circle

Started off in 1504 as a Renaissance-era fortification system, designed to resist cannon warfare. Over the years, it has undergone many reconstructions, with the latest turning it into a managed heritage park in the early 2000s (Planted rows of trees) . Ecology has played an important role in each of its eras, as we’ll see … Read more

Beyond Efficiency

The Purpose of AI in the Age of Resource Scarcity Introduction: Redefining the Question The question “What is the purpose of AI in AEC?” often elicits a predictable response focused on speed. For years the industry has viewed Artificial Intelligence primarily as a mechanism for automation. It is seen as a faster way to produce … Read more

Beyond Speed: Redefining the Purpose of AI in the AEC Industry

Initial Perspective: AI as an Efficiency Tool At the beginning of the course, I viewed AI primarily as a means to enhance productivity. It appeared to be a practical instrument for automating routine tasks, such as refining designs or performing structural calculations. By minimizing errors, reducing time requirements, and lowering costs, AI could expedite project … Read more