On Wednesday 2nd of Dec Achim Menges will speak at the Design Computation Symposium, which forms part of the Autodesk University 2015 event in Las Vegas attended by more than 10,000 design, engineering, and manufacturing professionals.

The symposium features leading designers who are interconnecting design, optimization and fabrication to support new ways of working:

Dave Fano of WeWork (previously of CASE) will give us his view of where the AEC industry is today in its application of BIM, computational and data-driven design. Dave was the CEO of CASE over the past 7 years and now is part of WeWork, giving him a unique point of view on the AEC industry’s current state and future possibilities.

Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg of Nervous System with discuss the design philosophy and fabrication process used to create their amazing work. Nervous System is a generative design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and technology. Drawing inspiration from natural phenomena, they create computer simulations to generate designs and use digital fabrication to realize products.

Bastian Schaefer from Airbus and David Benjamin from The Living will show how generative design, optimization and new fabrication techniques are being used today in the aerospace industry. They will discuss their work on new aircraft designs and the Bionic Partition project, a new aircraft part designed via a novel optimization process and 3d printed directly in metal.

Gijs Van Der Velden of MX3D will speak about the exciting design, optimization and robotic fabrication processes they are creating in order to robotically construct a bridge in Amsterdam.

Achim Menges will show the stunning work his group is creating at the Institute for Computational Design in Stuttgart Germany using a variety of materials and robotic fabrication techniques. Achim’s practice and research focuses on the intersection of design computation, biomimetic engineering and computer aided manufacturing that enables a highly articulated, performative built environment.