Designing Between Humans and Nature: Bridging Intent and Performance with AI

Design mediates the relationship between humans and nature. In the built environment, engineering decisions about form, structure, and material shape how people inhabit space and how natural systems are engaged, preserved, or transformed. Today, the environmental impact of construction is one of the defining challenges of our time. Buildings account for nearly forty percent of global carbon emissions, much of it embedded in materials and construction. This positions design as a powerful lever for shaping environmental outcomes. When performance is treated as a creative framework rather than a constraint, design can contribute to decarbonization while expanding the possibilities of architectural expression.

This talk presents a research and teaching program that advances design as a mode of engineering inquiry. Emerging computational, artificial intelligence, and fabrication tools are integrated directly into design workflows so that human intent, engineering performance, and material constraints can be considered simultaneously. Generative and multi-objective methods enable designers to explore trade-offs among structural efficiency, spatial quality, and environmental impact. Multimodal AI systems interpret sketches, language, and qualitative goals, translating them into alternatives grounded in physics-based analysis. Interactive interfaces connect geometric exploration with real-time performance feedback, reshaping the relationship between creative reasoning and engineering evaluation.

The work extends beyond digital models into physical realization. Robotic assembly, low-carbon concrete geometries, and algorithmic reuse of salvaged materials demonstrate how computational design can operate within real supply chains, new policy landscapes, and evolving construction economics. Across scales from material components to building and urban systems, these projects suggest that responding to the climate crisis is not only a technical challenge but a design opportunity. By integrating human creativity, engineering rigor, and material intelligence, design becomes a means of negotiating the future of the built environment in balance with natural systems.

Speaker: Caitlin Mueller, Massachussets Institute of Technology

Attend in person or online (see weblink)