Applications are open for the third edition of the Design by Data Advanced Master® in Computational Design, Digital Manufacturing and Building Technologies opening in September 2018 in Paris.
Design by Data provides attendees with a cross-disciplinary culture of computational design and a comprehensive knowledge of cutting-edge technologies in the fields of parametric architecture, robotics, digital manufacturing and 3D printing for the construction industry.
The program is run by the prestigious École des Ponts Paris Tech and designed for a selected group of architects, engineers and designers and it offers a variety of courses, fabrication and prototyping workshops, conferences, digital talks and networking events.
The program is a 12 month Executive part-time course (one week per month) including over 350 hours of teaching, a one-year research project. Besides the one week per month teaching courses, candidates can both keep their professional activities or develop their research and projects using the coworking and fablab facilities of the school - a full-time membership to access the digital fabrication resources of the school is included in the program fee.
Bringing together high-level scientific research with professional partners.
Two years after the launch, its director Francesco Cingolani, architect, professor and co-founder of Volumes is committed to the making of Design by Data a program to enable digital transformation in architecture and construction industry while opening and widing the scope of the discipline by mixing art and science. For that, he worked on partnerships agreement between the school and various professional firms, including architecture offices, digital fabrication startups, engineering firm, innovation hub and fab labs. The program aims to bring to Paris inspired and highly motivated students from different backgrounds and locations so they can be trained at school while having a high-level professional internship with one of the professional partners of the program.
To give an example of how students integrate professional and academic experience in Design by Data, we met Álvaro Cosidó, one of the students who joined the first edition of the program who moved from Madrid to Paris where he is now based. After an internship in a local engineering consultancy firm, for his personal research project, Álvaro developed an algorithmic tool to predict and quantify the audience and the visibility of a specific building’s facade in the city as a decision-making tool for real-estate and architecture business opportunity. Fed by urban open data sets of Paris and based on graph analysis, the application calculates different indicators to establish an urban benchmark, allowing to quantify the relevance of each location for a specific activity sector.
After the internship and the Design by Data graduation, Álvaro is currently occupying a position as computational designer at ECHOES.PARIS, a young design engineering firm official partner of Design by Data. ECHOES.PARIS focuses on design computation and automation, with projects related to architectural and urban design, complex structures and digital fabrication.
Sébastien Pérrault, CEO of ECHOES.PARIS is also a faculty member of the program Design by Data, in which he teaches Performance Driven Design, a course that addresses the inherent logic in the relationship between form, expressivity and efficiency. Below are some examples of his works.
Sébastien Pérrault co-designed with Hugh Dutton Associés the renowned CLIMATE RIBBONTM, an architectural feature of the Brickell City Centre in Miami that maximizes the climatic comfort through a series of non-standard sun-screening blades which geometry is meticulously drive by solar data and environmental performances.
ECHOES.PARIS works resonate with Design by Data manifesto centered around non-standard design and digital fabrication as a key feature of the future of architecture and construction. Drawing automation and a process-based approach to design is essential to achieve the construction of complex geometry, such as the AL WAKRAH STADIUM by Zaha Hadid in Qatar, for which Sébastien Perrault’s studio generated and documented more than 15.000 non-standards cladding elements and their 30.000 structural reinforcements.
While tutoring Álvaro on his research project, Sébastien Pérrault was interested in integrating him into the firm to consolidate the studio works on urban morphology based on environmental data.
ECHOES.PARIS is developing parametric and generative models that explore the design-space of high-density massing by producing, evaluating and optimizing designs through the prism of comfort and energy indicators.
Rule-based typologies and solar-automata are used to evaluate the impact of sunlight and gravity on morphology in order to provide a powerful decision-making tool for further design development.
For its second edition, Design by Data is currently having 16 students coming from different countries, including United States India, Iran and Canada with a majority of them having a design or architecture background but also including engineers profiles and students from real estate sector. 15 out of them are taking an internship while focusing on their research project.
The ongoing research projects include:
- Robotic assembly of long-span wood structures (collaboration with the robotics lab of the school)
- Non-standard concrete 3D printing for facade modules (partnership with XtreeE)
- Data visualization in Virtual Reality for Design and Architecture (partnership with Noumena)
- Reused material for design and digital fabrication (partnership with Fab City Grand Paris NGO)
About the school.
École des Ponts ParisTech - created in 1747 under the name École Royale des Ponts et Chaussées, is a higher education establishment that trains engineers and designers to a high level of scientific, technical and general competency.
It is one of the most prestigious engineering institutions in Europe with a persistent and strong desire to innovate in the future of building and design.
The school has launched in 2015 the DESIGN by DATA, an Advanced Master in Computational Design, Digital Manufacturing and Building Technologies directed by architect and designer Francesco Cingolani and it is now opening one of the most important robotics labs for the construction industry in France and Europe.
About Paris.
Paris is standing on the international scene as one of most vibrant capital in Europe and in the world. With a wide range of fablabs, coworking spaces and startup incubators, including the world's largest, Paris is definitely on the map as one of the leading capital for innovation with a strong strategy based on open innovation and strong communities.
The city just won the European Capital of Innovation Award for its digital innovation scene and thanks to the Fab City approach the City Council is implementing to make of Paris one of the most productive cities in the world in terms of digital fabrication, urban agriculture and distributed energy production.
Within this context, Paris is welcoming in July 2018 the Fab City Summit, an international gathering of experts and communities interested in circular economy, urban planning, digital fabrication, new business models, civic engagement and sustainable design and production.
Design by Data students will be actively involved in the exhibition of the Fab City Campus as a part of their academic training towards innovation in architecture and design.
More information about the part-time Advance Master here.
Apply for the 3rd edition of Design by Data starting in September here.
Contact: Francesco Cingolani, director of the program francesco.cingolani@enpc.fr
