SSHRC Insight Development Grant

Prof. Aaron Sprecher (Architecture) and Prof. Damiano Pasini (Mechanical Engineering) have been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for a total amount of $80,000 to be used within two years. The grant was awarded for "The Evo DeVO Project - Evolutionary Design, Variations and Optimization: Toward a Symbiosis among Formal Expressions, Structural Engineering, and Manufacturing Processes in Architectural Design." Prof. Sprecher is the Principal Investigator and Prof. Pasini the Co-Applicant.

The Evo DeVO research project focuses on the potential to optimize design solutions by combining computational methods that are currently researched in the fields of biomimetics, structural engineering and design computing. The main objective of the project is to use computers to create elegant designs ranging in scale from industrial design components to complex construction systems inspired by biological mechanisms such as the growth of plants, cellular patterns of organization and responsive materials in nature.

The project will be developed in the context of the new CFI-funded Laboratory for Integrated Prototyping in Hybrid Environments (LIPHE) at the School of Architecture. Under the direction of Prof. Sprecher, the lab will define advanced design methods that take advantage of the high degree of optimization offered by computational tools and digital fabrication processes.

The Evo DeVO project stems from a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between an architect with a specialty in digital manufacturing (Sprecher) and an engineer who specializes in structural engineering, design optimization and hybrid material design (Pasini), both from McGill University. The Insight Development Grant will allow the professors to initiate this interdisciplinary collaboration with the aim of ultimately attaining a fully-fledged research program.