Curious Engineering Design Practice

The identifiable metrics and the traditions of structural engineering show a discipline characterised by polarised practice that is decisive, often mistakenly based on intuition and increasingly reliant on finite technology. Over the last two decades, the work of AKT II demonstrates a different characterisation born out of a contemporary approach to the discipline, a particular approach that bridges those qualities with design through dismantling traditional understanding of the discipline, in order to stay relevant.

In this work, the most important characterisation of the practice remains weightless: creativity, rigour, passion, curiosity, incremental innovation and aesthetic appreciation. This then weaves through the projects and our encounters in the wider context of economic challenges, ecological denial and political transformation in the new world order. This lecture, through the examples of projects, will show the ideas that come out of construction, design practice and engagement between academia and the built environment.