European consortium of six premier research institutions and 14 leading industry partners to create an interdisciplinary network of 15 PhD positions on innovative building design practice under the Horizon 2020 programme.

Six European research institutions and 14 leading practices from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK join forces in a new research network examining how advanced digital design tools can positively challenge future building culture, enabling more sustainable, better informed and materially smarter design solutions.

The network, known as “Building Innovation in the Extended Digital Chain” (InnoChain), has recently received a EUR 4 million grant from EU’s Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions programme under Horizon 2020 and will include 15 new doctoral projects within the fields of architecture and engineering. The doctoral researchers will be enrolled at the partner research institutions and InnoChain’s 14 industry partners will offer the doctoral researchers hands-on experience, exposing them to the applied reality of situated research and development across the digital chain.

Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and project lead states:

“The purpose of the project is to expand, synthesise and consolidate knowledge into computationally informed building design practice across academia and practice. InnoChain has a strong inter-sector focus and connects emerging and established research environments in academia and professional practice from architecture, engineering, design software development and fabrication”.

The network will investigate the extended digital chain as a fertile opportunity for design innovation. It will develop new interdisciplinary design methods that integrate advanced simulation and material fabrication. Employing a practice-based industry-focused method, the network asks how new bespoke design tools can be created to enable advanced simulation of structure, material and process and how they can lead to the creation of smarter material and design solutions.

15 new PhD positions 

The network creates a structured training programme focused on individual research projects, supervised by experienced researchers and enriched through an inter-sector secondment programme with industry partners. The consortium includes run a programme of joint research events, including workshop-seminars, colloquia, a summer school and research courses.

Positions will be advertised on the InnoChain website [link].