Material Design

Material Design explores materials and methods of construction and fabrication in architecture. Materials are analyzed with emphasis on their physical properties, functions, and behavior in manufactured and installed assemblies. The research approach is to extract "layers" or "strata" of material process data from the complex nature of their embedded application in building to develop a language specific to operations and properties leading to the ultimate scale of construction.

Material Design has led to a number of built projects including most recently Bamboo Oblique for the 2009 Gwangju Design Biennale in Korea as well as journal and book publications including "Integrating Material Culture" in Journal of Architectural Education and Birkhäuser Publisher's Principles of Construction book series for that Schroepfer is a subject editor. His book titled Material Design under the same publisher is forthcoming in Spring 2010.

Material Design is supported by a Dean's Grant from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Over the last decades, an increasing spatial reach and density of global interconnectedness continues to weave complex webs and networks of relations between clients, designers, and builders. With the opening of national economies and markets and the related transfer of professional personnel from one place to another, design and building practice is not as apart from design building practice elsewhere as it was before. Otherwise dissimilar elements of professional life have been brought much closer together.

The objective of this research is to provide design and building professionals and researchers with a better understanding of the impacts of global collaborations on discourse and practice. These impacts are examined both in breadth and depth. Methodologies employed include interviews with design and building professionals and researchers, quantitative analyses of project data, and in-depth case studies of recent and current “global projects,” i.e. projects in which local designers and builders collaborate with global designers and builders in various parts of the world.

Global Design and Building Practice has led to a series of publications including Globalization and Building Practice 1: An Analytic Framework and Four Case Studies and Globalization and Building Practice 2: Four Case Studies in Asia (forthcoming 2010). The research is currently supported by the Harvard Asia Center. It was previously supported by a Dean's Grant from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Hochtief Group.

TransUrban: Charting Experiments for Cities of the Future

TransUrban is an interdisciplinary research on recent and current city developments in Europe. The idea of sustainable cities is examined here in more than the environmental and ecological aspects, and the emergent forms of urbanism documented and analyzed for lessons that inform on the shape of cities to come. These built experiments embody complex topics of design, building technologies, environmental strategies, as well as models of affordability, but at the same time, explore new trajectories in the development of the city.

Two in a planned series of in-depth case studies have been conducted so far: 

Case Study 1: Vauban describes the guiding principles and their implementation in the planning and design of a new major development of a sustainable city district: a 38-hectare former barracks site near the town center of Freiburg, Germany that was purchased by the city in 1994 with the goal to convert it into a flagship environmental and social project. Vauban comprises 2,000 homes to house 5,000 people, as well as business units to provide about 500-600 jobs. The project is currently nearing completion and is widely seen as one of the most positive examples in Europe of environmental thinking in relation to urban design.

Case Study 2: solarCity LInz currently comprises about 1,300 homes and 3,000 inhabitants. Solarcity was designed as a flagship development for renewable energies in urban design and includes projects by architects like Foster and Partners, Richard Rogers, and Thomas Herzog. Construction time of the nucleus of solarCity took place from 1995 to 2005. It will eventually grow to 25,000 inhabitants and become the largest sustainable town-planning example in Europe. 

TransUrban has led to a number of publications including TransUrban: Charting Experiments for Cities of the Future – Case Study 2: solarCity Linz and TransUrban: Charting Experiments for Cities of the Future – Case Study 1: Vauban. The project has further led to a traveling exhibition that was shown at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, December 2006 to January 2007; Urban Redevelopment Authority Singapore, Architecture and Design Excellence Program, in collaboration with Singapore Institute of Architects, Goethe-Institut Singapore, and Harvard External Relations in March 2007; Tsinghua University Beijing, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Beijing in April 2007; Hong Kong Institute of Architects, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Hong Kong, Harvard Club of Hong Kong, and Harvard External Relations in May 2007; SPACE Group Gallery, Seoul, Korea, supported by Urban Design Institute of Korea and Goethe-Institut Korea in July 2007; Fundación Metrópoli in Madrid, Spain in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Madrid and Harvard External Relations August in September 2007.

The research is currently supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the Real Estate Academic Initiative at Harvard University (REAI). It was previously supported by a Dean's Grant from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and by the German Goethe-Institute.