Events Calendar

PhD Seminar

Speaker: Evangelos Pantazis, PhD Candidate, University of Southern California

Talk Title: A design methodology framework at the intersection of Architecture, Engineering and construction using Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract: This talk will review research on the prototyping of multi-agent systems (MAS) for architectural design. It proposes a design exploration methodology at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and construction. The motivation of the work includes exploring bottom up generative methods coupled with optimizing performance criteria including geometric complexity and objective functions for environmental, structural and fabrication parameters. The work focuses on the development of a design methodology and initial experiments to provide design solutions, which simultaneously satisfy complexly coupled and often contradicting objectives.
The prototypical experiments vary in complexity and focus on different design domains, namely: a) facade design, and the development of non structural building component (facade panels) that is adjusted based on the environmental performance of the facade b) shell design; and the development of structural building component (reciprocal frames) for form finding actual construction of lightweight shell structures using digital and robotic fabrication.
The developed system and algorithms are described, and initial results of the multi-agent derived efficiencies are presented


Biography: Evangelos Pantazis is currently pursuing a PhD at the Viterbi School of Engineering, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. Evangelos holds a Masters of Advanced studies in the field of Computer Aided Architectural Design from the ETH in Zurich (2012). He received his Diploma in Architecture with honors from Aristotles University of Thessaloniki (2010), and has also graduated from the MOKUME jewelry design school in 2007, where he was trained as a jeweler.
Professionally, Evangelos has gained experience in several international offices, including Graft in Berlin, Germany, Melhado Architectes in Londrina, Brasil and Studio Pei Zhu in Beijing/China. Soon after, he co-founded Topotheque design office, a studio that focuses on computational design with its various tangent disciplines such architecture, product deisgn and graphic and plastic art. His latest work is focusing on non-linear design strategies for architectural and design purposes, their integration with performance analyses and their materialization using digital fabrication.


Host: Burcin Becerik-Gerber

Location: 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kaela Berry