The Design Research Group takes "Design" as the core, supported by architectural theory, digital tools, digital fabrication, and design creativity. The group introduces advanced research topics, in support of future architects with both critical design thinking and hands-on tools for architectural design experiments. The combination of theory and methods, design tools and experimental operations, and international design workshops will enhance design talents with capability to face the future challenges in architecture.
Courses in the discipline combine theory and practice, design and fabrication, and thinking and experimentation. The theory and practice courses focus on architectural criticism and analysis of contemporary architectural practice. The design computing and fabrication courses focus on the logic of architecture, algorithms & computer programming, and digital tools. The thinking and experimentation courses focus on the independent explorative ability for forward-looking research topics. Design and research are two basic, yet complementary, capabilities in this group.
The curriculum is centered on creative design projects supported by digital tools and fabrication. The scale of design projects ranges from space, buildings, cities, materials, digital tools, interface design, etc. The research topics cover parametric design, digital fabrication, design computation theory, sustainable and smart cities, circular economy, artificial intelligence, and building information modeling.