Labs

AAP labs catalyze imagination and innovation to address urgent challenges facing our cities and communities. Led by faculty with deep disciplinary and trans-disciplinary expertise, the labs forge networks and collaborations that push boundaries to advance a more resilient, sustainable, and just world.

  • Adaptive Land Lab

    Linda Shi

    Studies why cities adopt regressive climate adaptation practices and what alternative approaches to property rights, land use and fiscal policies, and regional governance would enable more equitable and sustainable futures. 

  • Circular Construction Lab

    Felix Heisel

    Activates research to shift material consumption toward a circular model for designing and building a sustainable, low / no-carbon construction industry.

  • Design Across Scales Lab

    Alex Kobald, J. Meejin Yoon

    A research platform, creative think tank, and incubator working at the intersection of the built environment, technology, sociology, and ecology.

  • Ecological Action Lab

    Caroline O'Donnell

    Engaging in relationships and networks rather than objects, the lab experiments with nose-to-tail practices, novel materials, and the reimagining of the function of objects.

  • Environmental Systems Lab

    Timur Dogan

    Specializes in sustainable architecture and urbanism through research across design, engineering, computation, and building performance simulation.

  • Housing Innovation Lab

    Katharina Kral

    Investigating the intersections of environmental, societal, and well-being concerns linked to housing, the lab explores synergies between building performance and quality of life across scales and their potential to reshape domestic space and architectural workflows. 

  • Housing + Property Lab

    Suzanne Lanyi Charles

    Examines the effects of global housing investment on local neighborhoods and household access to affordable, secure, and stable housing.

  • Just Places Lab

    Jennifer Minner

    A multi-disciplinary research lab for igniting creative action, public imagination, and participatory place-keeping in the built environment.

  • Landscape and Urban Environmentalities Lab

    Tao DuFour

    Studies the lived experience, narrative structure, and interlaced constitution of architecture, cities, and landscapes, inquiring into the sense of environmental experience as an embodied and intergenerationally shared inheritance and responsibility. 

  • Legal Constructs Lab

    Sara Bronin

    Leads interdisciplinary projects in property, land use, historic preservation, and energy, inquiring into how law can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places.

  • Local Government Restructuring Lab

    Mildred Warner

    From finance and infrastructure policy to economic development, planning, and public health, the Local Government Restructuring Lab explores cutting-edge research to inform public practice.

  • Realtime Urbanism Lab

    Farzin Lotfi-Jam

    Investigates the social impacts of new technologies that virtualize cities and populations. The lab produces research using extended reality interfaces, gaming engines, agent-based simulations, digital twins, and smart urban systems.

  • Regenerative Architecture Lab

    Marta H. Wisniewska

    Investigates alternative building materials and innovative construction techniques for a healthier and more regenerative built environment in the context of developed and developing territories.

  • Robotic Construction Lab

    Sasa Zivkovic

    Integrates computation, state-of-the-art digital fabrication,  and robotic construction to develop sustainable, full-scale architectural projects.

  • Rural-Urban Building Innovation Lab

    Leslie Lok

    Explores the intersection of urbanization, novel material methods, and technology to create and experiment with hybridized design and construction processes in the urban fringe.

  • Sabin Design Lab

    Jenny Sabin

    Specializes in trans-disciplinary architectural design, computation, data visualization, and digital fabrication at the intersection of architecture and science for the production of responsive material structures and bio-inspired sustainable systems.

  • Transportation Access and Policy Lab

    Nicholas J. Klein

    Focused on urban transportation, the lab studies the role that transportation plays in social and economic mobility, public opinions, and new technologies.

  • Water In, Water Out Lab

    Victoria A. Beard

    Produces new research on the water to waste cycle, across actionable scales, from source protection to household access. The lab connects knowledge to action to create more equitable and sustainable urban water management systems.

  • &Lab

    María González Pendás, Suzanne Lettieri

    A space born out of collaboration aimed at fostering new pedagogies and modes of public and civic-academic alliance through architectural design, architectural humanities, and the modes of research, teaching, and learning that animate them. 

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