On April 29, 2023, the AIANY WIA committee partnered with Eventscape A+D to co-host the Women in Fabrication Conference & Workshop. The one-day event took place in Eventscape’s fabrication facility in Long Island City and was sponsored by Sika, an expert in innovative 3D concrete printing materials. The Conference & Workshop was organized to promote the work and perspectives of female stars in architectural fabrication and encourage women designers and design students to consider architectural fabrication as a career path—or a path to elevating their projects above and beyond the ordinary.

A morning conference featured presentations and dialog with five pioneering women in design and construction who are leading A&D practice initiatives. We kicked off the morning with a keynote address by Shelby Doyle, AIA, Associate Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University College of Design, who discussed her feminist perspective on advanced fabrication titled ‘A Carrier Bag of Tools for Computational Feminism’. The talk invited the audience to reconsider how we define technology and who participates in technological practices. Doyle’s work at the ISU Computation & Construction Lab focuses on the cultures of architecture and computation using the disciplinary tools of writing, teaching, coding, drawing, making, and building.

A panel of four additional women leaders in architectural fabrication followed the keynote, moderated by Billie Faircloth, FAIA, Partner & Research Director, Kieran Timberlake. Billie presented her perspective on “Refabricating Architecture.” Using examples like the firm’s Loblolly House, which transformed the way we make architecture by using prefabrication methods and technologies to compress the construction timespan and create a sustainable shelter, Faircloth addressed 3D printed, carbon-absorbing, high-performance building structures. Haripriya Nekkanti, Materials Engineer – Construction for SIKA USA, provided a glimpse of exciting new developments in materials science for 3D concrete printing. Natalie Haddad, Head of Prototyping at Assembly OSM, showcased her firm’s focus on modularity in the delivery of architecturally distinctive, high-rise buildings through a technologically advanced process of digital design, manufacturing, assembly and on-site installation. Zoe Ross, Associate Director of the Design Center at Barnard College, shared how she is shaping the Center’s programming, establishing protocols for training and use of equipment, the pedagogy associated with making, and carving out a safe place for women to explore their potential in a traditionally male-dominated field. Following the presentations, Faircloth led an insightful panel discussion between Doyle, Haddad, Ross and Nekkanti, exploring their perspectives on the current and future state of architectural fabrication, and the personal and professional journeys that have inspired them, touching on moments of discovery, barriers to entry, value propositions, cross-industry partnerships, the role of research in their work and advice to women just entering the field.

The morning session ended with a tour of Eventscape’s state-of-the-art fabrication studio, plus a live demonstration of 3D concrete printing by Eventscape and Sika.

In the afternoon, a hands-on workshop was offered for a deeper exploration of 3D concrete printing. Ali Seyedahmadian, Eventscape Senior Design Engineer, and Eventscape Design Engineers Jung In Seo and Ester Lo led a session that commenced with a history of and introduction to cementitious printing, followed by a one-hour session on design and robot programming. Four of the workshop teams were excited to see their design concepts realized by Eventscape’s 8-axis Kuka robot in a 2-hour printing session that showcased the various skills they had developed in the workshop.

AIANY Women in Architecture Committee and Eventscape would like to express our special thanks to Sika for supplying all the materials for the day’s printing sessions.