About
Dr. Ehsan Baharlou is an Assistant Professor of Architecture, Advanced Technologies, at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. His work focuses on ecological construction to meet the challenges of climate change through research on sustainable materials and robotic construction. He explores novel design strategies to shift the design approach from material- and fabrication-centered design processes to multispecies design.
His research interests include integrating design computation with the process of materialization. He aims to mediate the cyber-physical interactions between complex forms and advanced manufacturing tools, shifting from a paradigm of abstracted computational design toward an integration of both physical (fabrication and production) and digital investigations.
Dr. Baharlou’s three current research projects focus on utilizing bio printing to create living architecture and upcycling plastics. The first funded research project involves using mycelium to engineer living material for biomanufacturing. The second aims to innovate methods to embed greenery within 3D printed soil, especially in a way that integrates biomaterial with design and fabrication. The final project investigates techniques to upcycle plastics and the role that this might play in the future of construction.
His previous projects include developing a mobile robotic system for in situ additive manufacturing with soil-based material, devising a novel hybrid composite system, exploring possibilities in the robotic assembly of timber structures, and investigating adaptive additive manufacturing techniques.
Dr. Baharlou completed his postdoctoral associate in 2018 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Professor Mark Goulthorpe, where he focused on the automated production of composite architecture. His post-doctoral research also investigated the development of CAD/CAM software customization in composite architectures. He earned his doctoral degree (Dr.-Ing.) in 2017 under the supervision of Professor Achim Menges at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) at the University of Stuttgart. Dr. Baharlou’s doctoral research focused on the integration of fabrication and construction constraints into a computational model for the realization of informed form generation. His earlier teaching experiences include leading several international workshops on computational design and Robotic Fabrication, and teaching undergraduate/graduate students at ICD.