The Chair of IC has been awarded the 2018 ARUP Global Research Challenge

The annual challenge aims to foster innovation, exploration and multi-disciplinary collaboration to understand global challenges.

Project brief: Cities face a demand to spend large amounts of resources for construction of urban housing and infrastructure. The use of current construction methods and processes will require tremendous natural resources extraction and greatly contribute to pushing limits of Planetary Boundaries. This research project proposes to bridge the existing tension between urban housing demand and Planetary Boundaries through the application of industrialized construction (IC). IC is emerging as an alternative method to design, produce, and build structures more efficiently. The predictability and repetitiveness of IC coupled with mass customization makes it an effective strategy for housing. At the macro-level, researchers will quantify for 30 cities the impact of industrialized construction on Planetary Boundaries compared to no change in construction methods. At the micro-level, researchers will conduct three case studies in developing urban cities to investigate the potential application of industrialized construction. The objective of the research is to: a) asses the intersection of housing demand and material extraction b) study current use of IC and its Environmental potentials c) create a guideline for a sustainable transition towards Industrialized housing construction. The outcome of this research will be a framework and index to guide the future actions of local planners, politicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs facilitating the transition to industrialized construction. An illustration of the project is presented in the diagram below