Prof. Lawrence Sass

Associate Professor of Architecture
Director, Digital Design Fabrication Group
Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow

Primary DLC

Department of Architecture

MIT Room: 7-304C

Areas of Interest and Expertise

Affordable Housing
Digital Fabrication
3D Printing
Sustainable Energy
Additive Manufacturing
3D Modeling

Research Summary

The research is focused on solving problems associated with rapid Digital Home Delivery. He conducts research on design processing, computing and digital fabrication. Design processing is a file to fabrication of a single-family house directly from a 3D model. Knowledge discovery is created by exploration of three domains of study.

Design processing for most fields includes physical production as much as it involves idea creation. An architect considers how their ideas will be constructed as much as they ponder how they will be used. Unfortunately, when it comes to new technologies in design building construction continues to be a completely neglected field. To make matters worse construction also suffers from a shrinking labor market, an over demand for stand-alone, rural homes and constant need for design variety. The lack of technical and vocational interest greatly affects the affordable single market.

Design fabrication is computer controlled physical production of buildings directly from 3D computer models. As a system of production Design Fabrication provides hope that real world solutions are possible. Building scale 3D printing is one of many possible ways to produce a building from vector-based data. Most important there are undiscovered ways to produce a building directly from computers. In most cases they will continue to require the assistance of human labor. Our research group explores ways to construct buildings from data using CNC machines, robotics and people. We write software that assists in design decomposition and fabrication of all aspects of building production.

Recent Work

  • Video

    Lawrence Sass - 2019 RD Conference

    November 20, 2019Conference Video Duration: 21:4

    Rapid Building Design and Delivery

    Construction Tech is one of the fastest growing areas of venture capital funding in the US. With over three billion in investments over the past year it is clear that Construction Tech will soon impact the ways we deliver building of all sizes. Moving forward we need new, rich ideas in software development to solve many of the building industries toughest problems. The talk will present a framework for home delivery directly from computers. Larry will show how builders will design and construct buildings from digital files using systems similar to 3D Printing.

    2019 MIT Research and Development Conference