DIGITAL DESIGN FOR LIVING STRUCTURES
Senior Faculty: Chiara Farinea
Faculty: Mohamad El Atab

Image Credits: Advanced Architecture Group

Living systems have the potential to provide cities with multiple ecosystem services, such as food, materials, energy production, climate control, water purification, or pollination. How can digital technologies help us integrate living systems into urban environments? Can we build the future of cities through a nature-based approach?

The Digital Design For Living Systems students will generate new visions and applications for the future of our cities. Students will use computation and digital manufacturing to develop projects and 1:1 scale functioning prototypes of urban elements, integrating living systems into the urban environment.

Image Credits: Advanced Architecture Group

The Digital Design For Living Systems seminar is developed as part of the international project Building Urban Intelligent Living Design Solutions (BUILDs), co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. 10 IAAC students will be selected to work in multidisciplinary student groups with the University of Lorraine Biology students and the University of Vienna Business and Economic students towards the development of biologically viable and marketable products, with the end goal of accelerating these towards start-ups. Their projects will be proposed to investors thanks to the Start-up Accelerator Company Green Tech Challenge. Moreover, the projects developed will be part of an online challenge where a jury will select a winning project, and whose developers will win a grant to spend one month in the Copenhagen Bloxhub Accelerator in September 2020. There, they will meet with experts to further develop their project as well as with investors to bring it to the market, giving the students the opportunity to create a startup.

For further information on the BUILDs project, please visit here.

Partners of the BUILDs project: