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) 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.
David Costanza is the principal of David Costanza Studio (DCS), a design-build practice based in Ithaca, New York. Costanza is also an assistant professor at Cornell University AAP and director of the Building Construction Lab (BCL). Through practice, research, and teaching, his work questions how architects can operate as engaged participants in the act of making. His work questions the linearity of design processes defining new terrains for architectural interventions across scales while establishing a dialogue between representation, computational design tools, digital manufacturing, building science, building materials, construction, labor, and the environment.
Costanza was awarded the 2024-2025 Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Cademy in Rome, the 2023 Emerging Faculty Award from the Building Technology Educators’ Soceity (BTES), and the 2020 Rotch Traveling Scholarship.
Currently, he is working on a book project with Routledge publishers titled “Curious Constructions: Around Materials, Labor, and the Environment,” a deep energy low-carbon reconstruction in Ithaca, New York, as well as amterial research in the reuse and recycling of plastic as a building construction material. His academic research has been published at ACADIA, SCSA, and ICSA, among others. Costanza received his Master of Architecture with a concentration in Computation and a Master of Science in Architecture Building Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.