BUILDING
CONSTRUCTION
LAB
Cornell University
College of Art, Architecture, and Planning
340M E. Sibley Hall
Costanza@cornell.edu
+ 1 585 666 2840
The Building Construction Lab (BCL) is located within the Department of Architecture at Cornell AAP. The lab foregrounds building construction knowledge as the intrinsic site of architectural expertise and questions how a better understanding of materials, construction, and the environment informs an architecture that addresses the climatic, social, and cultural impacts of building buildings.
The Building Construction Lab (BCL) interrogates the entire design production cycle, from material sourcing to labor ethics—which challenges labor's unequal social and economic constructions—in a critical and conscious attempt to reprioritize architecture’s relevance. The expanded agency allotted by digital modes of operating demands that architects think more holistically about the things we make and how they shape us. A comprehensive understanding of a material's embodied energy, transportation cost, geometric limitations, structural capacity, and manufacturing processes allows the materialization of buildings to inform their conception.
Through this lens, computation, fabrication, and material systems are reconsidered in research conducted in the BCL. We reframe automation and digital fabrication in connection to labor economies and materials to their life cycle, attempting to synthesize a pursuit of ecological mindfulness with an ambition to act ethically. This methodology expands the traditional disciplinary boundaries by synthesizing design and research, thinking, and making, allowing performative and technological considerations to shift the priorities by which we assign value, creating a more accessible and equitable built environment.
The Building Construction Lab (BCL) was founded in 2020 by David Costanza.