PhD scholarship in integrating building physics for performance control
The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia PhD scholarship vacancy applications
The PhD scholarship is posted in the following project:
“Integrating Building Physics for performance control”
INNOCHAIN FRAMEWORK
InnoChain is a 4 year international research network for highly motivated young scientists, where state-of-the-art research is combined with a comprehensive training and secondment programme. The network is funded by the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network scheme.
The research network assembles a highly cross disciplinary team of experienced researchers drawn from architecture (CITA/KADK (coordinator), Bartlett School of Architecture, Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya and Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) and engineering (Universität Stuttgart/ITKE and Universität für Angewandte Kunst Vienna/IOA) and leading industry partners (Foster + Partners, White Arkitekter, BIG, HENN, ROK, Cloud 9, Buro Happold, str.ucture, designtoproduction, Smith Innovation, Blumer-Lehmann, S-Form, Factum Arte Desarrollos Digitales and McNeel Europe).
This call is for a 3 year PhD Scholarship that is fully integrated within the network. The PhD student will be enrolled at IAAC-UPC. It is our ambition that the PhD will start in September of 2015.
INNOCHAIN Project Summary
The InnoChain network is a shared research training environment examining how advances in digital design tools challenge building culture, enabling more sustainable, better informed and materially smarter design solutions. The network aims to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers with a strong industry focus that can effect real changes in the way we think, design and build our physical environment.
The programme investigates the extended digital chain as a particular opportunity for interdisciplinary design collaboration. Challenging the traditional thinking of design as a linear process of incremental refinement, InnoChain identifies three axes of design innovation potential communication, simulation and materialisation appearing as distributed and interdisciplinary activities across the design chain. Situating feedback between design processes as a key concern for developing holistic and integrated design methods, the network will develop new interdisciplinary design methods that integrate advanced simulation and interface with material fabrication.
With a strong inter-sector focus, InnoChain connects “research in practice” with “research in academia”. Assembling 6 internationally recognised academic research environments leading research into computational design in architecture and engineering and 14 innovation pioneering industry partners from architecture, engineering, design software development and fabrication, the programme will establish a shared training platform for 15 early stage researchers. The network creates a structured training programme focussed on supervision of individual research projects, an inter-sector secondment programme as well as collective research events including workshop-seminars, colloquia, summer school and research courses that provide a unique opportunity for young researchers to obtain new knowledge and skills positioning them between strong innovative research practice and influential industrial impact.
Read more about the network here: http://innochain.net/
PHD POSITION FOCUS
INTEGRATING BUILDING PHYSICS FOR PERFORMANCE CONTROL (ESR 3)
The project is focused on building performance simulation and new fabrication techniques for the application of “smart materials” in architectural construction. If computers were once the size of buildings, buildings are now becoming computers, both performative, employing I/O Communication protocols, and programmable, at material scale. To integrate these new paradigms into building practice in effective and applicable manners we need new tools that communicate and relate building performance, operation, use and material . The project will focus on materials that change properties on specific inputs (including shape memory polymers and foams) and new composite materials that present pre-set combinations of mechanical properties. The project will develop new methods for designing, controlling and fabricating materials that actuate in response to occupation or environmental change. Key concept include: designing with growth, adaptability, repair, replication and energy savings in architecture.
Expected Results:
To develop new design methods that integrate simulation of building performance, operation and material actuation/behaviour. To test material actuation as means of energy saving in the built environment.
Supervisor:
Professor Manuel Gausa, Professor Eduard Bru, Associate Professor Areti Markopoulou
Industry collaborations:
Mc Neel (Design software developer Rhino3D, Spain) and Foster + Partners Limited (Architecture Practice, UK)
Planned secondments:
The planned secondments include two 4 month periods, one at McNeel, and one at Foster + Partners.
McNeel to situate the development of active interfacing between design, occupation and material within industry standards for modelling building physics and building operating. Foster will situate and contextualise developed communication interfaces, provide project context for direct application of concepts and tools.
IAAC – INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED ARCHITECTURE OF CATALONIA
UNIVERSITAT POLITÈCNICA DE CATALUNYA
The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia is an international centre for Education Fabrication and Research dedicated to the development of architecture capable of meeting the worldwide challenges in constructing 21st century habitability.
Based in the 22@ district of Barcelona, one of the world’s capitals of architecture and urbanism, IAAC is a platform for the exchange of knowledge with researchers, faculty and students from over 60 countries.
Every year IAAC selects 100 new students from all over the world that gather at IAAC and give life to this significant laboratory for experimentation in order to envision the dwellings and the cities of our time, as well as their future. Students work simultaneously on multiple scales (city, building, manufacturing) and in different areas of expertise (self sufficiency, digital fabrication, parametric design, new material development, interaction), pursuing their own lines of enquiry and research towards the development of an integrated set of skills with which to act effectively both in their home country and globally.
IAAC is Education, with the Master in Advanced Architecture and the Master in City & Technology giving the next generation of architects the space to imagine, test and shape the future of cities, architecture and technology.
IAAC is Fabrication, with the Fab Lab Barcelona, the most advanced digital production laboratory in Southern Europe, a laboratory where you can build almost everything, that recently hosted Fab10, the 10th annual worldwide Fab Lab conference.
IAAC is Research, with Valldaura Labs, a self-sufficient research centre located in the Collserola Metropolitan park, 20 minutes from the centre of Barcelona, where a series of laboratories are implemented for the production and testing of Energy, Food and Things.
And IAAC is also Barcelona, the European Capital for Innovation (2014), the city that aims to be a self-sufficient city, a fab-lab city, a smarter city. Thanks to its innovative visions, IAAC is strategically aligned to the new urban policies of the city, developed in close collaboration and mutual inspiration between the two entities.
Researchers: Professor Manuel Gausa, Professor Eduard Bru, Associate Professor Areti Markopoulou and Dr. Mathilde Marengo
RESEARCHER’S ELEGIBILITY CRITERIA
A bachelor’s and master’s degree in architecture. Mature skills in relative material sciences, computational modeling, fabrication and programming are expected and must be demonstrated in the application.
According to the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions, to be eligible, each researcher must fulfill the following criteria at the time of recruitment by the host institution concerned within the time frame of this project:
1. Nationality
The researcher may be of any nationality.
2. Mobility
At the date of recruitment by the host institution, the researcher must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity (work, studies, etc…) in the country (Spain) of the host institution for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to his/her recruitment under the project.
3. Qualifications and research experience
Early stage researcher: means a researcher who, at the time of recruitment by the host institution, has not yet been awarded the doctorate degree and is in the first 4 years of his/her research career.
Read more about the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions here:http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/
Terms of Employment
The position is a Full Time position and will refer to the Terms and Conditions of IAAC-UPC. For further information on said terms and conditions, please contact [email protected]
APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS
In order to be admitted to the Doctorate of Architectural Design it is necessary to include the following documents in the application:
a) Architecture Degree
b) Architecture’s academic transcript
c) Master’s degree
d) Master’s academic transcript (It is necessary to have obtained a mark equivalent to 8 (out of 10) in the master’s dissertation
e) CV and Portfolio
f) Research projects carried out
g) Publications
h) Certificate from the center where completed your studies stating that the master completed gives access to doctorate in the country of origin.
i) Proposed work plan, with the following format:
1_Title, Name of the PhD program (InnoChain) and PhD focus (see PhD Focus above), student’s full name, e.mail, Phone number and Degree you have.
2_State of the art; Research framework; proposed methodology, objectives and outcomes
3_Proposed timetable of research development for the 3 years of the research duration (starting in September 2015)
The extension of the document should not exceed 5 pages.
j) 2 reference letters including the full name of the referee, referee’s position and institution, email of the referee, and telephone contact of the referee.
If something is missing, the application shall not be considered complete, and therefore not accepted.
In order to be able to do the PhD in English, a good written and spoken level is required for all applicants. The minimum level should be set:
• TOEFL Test (>80 iBT) certificate or equivalent is needed.
• Certificate in Advanced English (Level A o B) o Certificate of Proficiency in English.
• IELTS (mínimum rate: 7, in the Academic version or General Training).
APPLICATION PROCEDURE AND DEADLINE
Candidates should register in both of the following online links:
1_ http://apply.iaac.net/applications/view.php?id=28349
2_ https://preinscripcio.upc.edu/home_candidat.php?idioma=3
Please upload to links all the documents required for application (see APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS above).
3_Once having completed both online forms, please send one email to
[email protected] and [email protected]
Indicating that you have completed your pre-registration and application.
APPLICATION DEADLINE is the 17th of May 2015 at 24.00 CET
For further information about the application requirements, please contact Areti Markopoulou or Mathilde Marengo by telephone at +34 933 209 520 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Anyone who meets the eligibility criteria is encouraged to apply for the scholarship regardless of age, gender, race, religion or ethnicity.
Applicants will be informed by mid June 2015 of the results of the application procedure. Some applicants may be asked to further discuss application content in a Skype interview with the relative Selection Committee.
