Florida International UniversityConferenceEventWorkshop
Published: September 11, 2025 at 6:22 PM
ACADIA 2025 Workshop Registration is Live!
We’re thrilled to announce that registration for the ACADIA 2025 workshops is officially open! This year’s lineup features an incredible range of opportunities to learn, experiment, and collaborate at the intersection of design, technology, and research. Whether you’re joining us in Miami, participating online, or experimenting on the beach, these workshops set the stage for innovation, discovery, and exchange.
From large-scale robotic fabrication and bio-based material exploration to AI-powered design, neuroscience for architecture, adaptive climate-responsive envelopes, and immersive virtual avatars, the workshops encompass a variety of physical and virtual formats. Participants can expect both hands-on experiences with cutting-edge technologies and theoretical frameworks that challenge how we think about design in today’s cultural and ecological landscape.
Highlights include 3D-printed biomaterials, robotic sand drawings on Miami Beach, AI as a cultural technique, adaptive assembly using found materials, timber joinery with conversational AI, and much more. Each workshop is taught by leading researchers and practitioners in the field, offering invaluable skills, insights, and creative energy.
Spaces are limited and expected to fill quickly—secure your spot today and be part of shaping the future of computational design at ACADIA 2025!
Print–Scan–Adapt is a research-driven workflow developed at LAMÁQUINA that integrates sensing, data analysis, and adaptive control into large-scale 3D printing. Traditional extrusion processes often produce inconsistent results, with bead width and layer accuracy shifting due to speed, acceleration, and material flow. By combining real-time scanning with robotic parameter mapping, this workflow transforms fabrication challenges into data-driven design opportunities.
This workshop brings the research to life in a hands-on format, exploring feedback-driven control in large-scale pellet-based 3D printing. Pellet extrusion offers a sustainable alternative to filament deposition, supporting recycled polymers and industrial-scale output, yet the process is inherently unstable. Participants use a flange-mounted Intel RealSense depth camera to measure bead width during printing, correlating this data with robot speed and extrusion parameters via KUKA|prc. The resulting mapping model predicts and adapts deposition outcomes, allowing participants to actively control material behavior.
Instructors - Dinorah Martínez Schulte (UF Architecture, MANUFACTURA), Alex Schofield (CCA AEL, oplusi), Teri Watson (FIU Architecture RDF Lab, YEN studio)
In this workshop participants will be empowered through education in the emerging territories of alternative bio-based materials intersecting with computational design and robotic fabrication. Participants will learn; about state of the art additive manufacturing at scale, how to prepare bio-based material recipes, how these biod-based ingredients interact with the fabrication process, how to select and apply computational solutions that can respond to the restrictions of the mix, and how to turn the 3D geometry and data into information that can be performed by the robot. Participants will not just be taught a recipe and methodology for application, but more importantly will share skills and perspectives emphasizing the agency of each participant to design and think through materiality. Our objective is to raise awareness about innovation in fabrication processes, sustainable and circular materials, and the necessity to challenge our current processes of manufacture to move towards better ones in the future.
This workshop introduces participants to the use of Epic Games’ MetaHuman Creator and advanced AI tools in developing highly realistic digital avatars. Participants will explore how MetaHumans can act as human-like companions in virtual environments, guiding users through spatial experiences.
Instructors - Dr. Kristine Mun (ANFA), Arkar Hein (ANFA)
This one-day online workshop is divided into two parts:
Part 1 introduces architects and designers to Neuroscience for Architecture (NfA), its history, relevance, and key contributors. It covers how neuroscience informs spatial perception, cognition, and behavior, and surveys design work where NfA principles have been applied.
Part 2 demonstrates an NfA approach using behavioral proxy modeling through Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as a tool for understanding spatial cognition and neurological diversity. Participants will work with pre-coded ABM scripts in Rhino + Grasshopper to explore human navigation patterns informed by neurodiverse traits.
Through structured demonstrations and hands-on exercises, participants will examine how spatial conditions like corridor width or sequence influence agent behavior. The final output is a visually structured PDF with heatmaps and design reflections. The workshop provides an accessible entry into neuroscience-informed design thinking without requiring coding expertise.
Instructors - Joaquín Tobar Martínez (University of Houston)
How can we adapt structures built with machines within our existing built environment? How can these printed elements blend to create new types of assemblies with reused components?
Collaboration with machines is becoming increasingly common in construction sites. One of the advantages of 3D concrete printing is its ability to create free-form structures without relying on traditional formwork. For this workshop hosted at the ACADIA 2025 Conference, participants will explore the use of COBOD International’s modular gantry system at the University of Miami. Participants will explore topics such as safety guidelines, nozzle design, on-site material mixing, and parametric workflow for g-code generation using the BOD2 printer. This workshop presents a valuable opportunity to apply novel digital workflow while experimenting at a larger scale, generating customized geometries using computational design tools and fabricating in-situ with the support of experts in the field.
Instructors - Matias del Campo (NYIT), Sandra Manninger (NYIT)
Artificial Intelligence is neither neutral nor passive. It mediates architectural knowledge, reorganising design as an epistemic, aesthetic, and ontological condition. This workshop critically examines AI’s historical, theoretical, and ethical dimensions, framing it not merely as a generative tool but as a cultural technique that structures architectural thought and practice.
Participants will leave with a critical vocabulary and reflective toolkit for integrating AI into their own research and practice, understanding it as an infrastructural condition that both extends and challenges architecture’s intellectual foundations. The workshop is open to students, educators, and practitioners seeking to situate their AI explorations within wider disciplinary, societal, and ecological narratives, repositioning machine intelligence as a site of critical speculation, resistance, and transformative possibilities in architectural thinking.
Instructors - Dr. Madeline Gannon (ATONATON, FIU) “Robot Whisperer”
This hands-on workshop teaches how to create large-scale sand drawings using cable-driven robots on Miami Beach. Participants will learn about hardware setup, calibration techniques, and develop custom control software to create their own sand drawings that will then be documented through aerial photography. Participants will gain practical skills deploying robots in outdoor environments, experience writing interactive software for creative applications, and collaborate in a relaxed beach setting. The workshop balances technical learning with a one-of-a-kind experience of Miami. Expect sandy toes, creative experimentation, and more than likely a tan. Documentation will capture both the technical achievements and the laid-back collaborative atmosphere that emerges when computational design meets beachfront computing.
Guest Critic - Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen (CITA), Martin Tamke (CITA)
This intensive two-day online workshop introduces participants to the future of timber design workflows, where conversational AI acts as a collaborator in crafting complex joinery systems. By exploring a fully automated design-to-fabrication pipeline, attendees will learn how to translate natural-language prompts into production-ready C# code, directly executable within Rhino’s Grasshopper environment. The focus is on generating comprehensive digital outputs—custom parametric components, joint typologies, and fabrication-ready datasets—establishing a seamless prompt-to-code and code-to-geometry workflow. Participants will leave with a library of diverse joinery solutions and tools for integrating AI-driven design into their own timber projects.
Instructors - Johannes Braumann (Creative Robotics, Rob|Arch), Karl Singline (Creative Robotics), Emanuel Gollob (Creative Robotics), MAiRA (cognitive robot)
In this workshop, we will collaboratively prototype complex cognitive robotic systems that respond to real-time sensor input. Drawing from multiple data sources, participants will develop integrated workflows that directly inform physical fabrication processes. The workshop leverages the visual programming environment Grasshopper to enable highly customized, geometrically intricate path planning. Participants will be among the first to explore the brand-new Parametric Robot Control - the successor to KUKA|prc - offering robust simulation and control of myriad industrial and collaborative robots. Purpose-built for seamless integration across diverse programming environments, the new framework acts as a versatile backbone for a complete range of robotic applications.
Instructors - Mohammad Mahdi Mohammadi (Poznan University of Technology)
As climate patterns shift and extremes intensify, the design of architectural envelopes must evolve from static protective barriers into dynamic, data-informed systems capable of responding to future environmental conditions. This advanced online workshop explores how computational simulations, multi-objective optimization, and climate-forward thinking can inform the design of adaptive building skins that enhance thermal comfort, reduce energy use, and anticipate future climate scenarios.
This workshop explores the design and fabrication of coral-inspired, subterranean structures that promote marine ecological regeneration by employing 3D Graphic Statics as a design methodology and clay 3d printing as the fabrication method. Participants will design structurally intelligent, porous, modular geometries that provide coastal protection and serve as an artificial reef habitat for coral larvae and other marine life, promoting new coral reef growth. Using computational methods, designs will be generated, analyzed and optimized for clay 3d Printing, culminating in the fabrication of a prototype module.
Instructors - Jon Penvose (UPenn MSD-RAS), Qian Gu (UPenn MSD-RAS)
In response to Miami’s escalating vulnerability to climate-induced disasters, this workshop explores how real-time robotic sensing and AI-assisted planning can transform found materials (i.e., rubble, debris, and displaced objects) alongside pre-designed aggregates into protective infrastructure. Using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, participants will simulate the stacking and assembly of these elements into barricades, infill systems, and resilient barriers.
