ICD

Institute for Computational Design

The Institute for Computational Design (ICD) is dedicated to the teaching and research of computational design and computer-aided manufacturing processes in architecture.

02/10/2026

Research Group Leader Felix Amtsberg (Felix Amtsberg) has completed his work at ICD University of Stuttgart. He is now Professor of Production and Automation Technology in Timber Construction at Hochschule Biberach

Felix joined ICD in 2019 and led the Multi-Actor Fabrication Research Group until 2025. As a member of Cluster of Excellence IntCDC, his research focused on novel digital fabrication platforms for timber structures, with a particular emphasis on multi-actor and human-robot collaboration supported by augmented reality.

At IntCDC, Felix contributed to RP 4-1 - Cyber-Physical Wood Fabrication Platform, RP 4-2 - Cyber-Physical Fabrication Platform: Fluid Fabrication, and AP 29 - AR-Informed Collaborative Timber (Pre-)Fabrication. He also advised thesis projects and contributed to teaching within the ITECH Master Studio Master of Science programme.

Before joining ICD, Felix completed an apprenticeship as a joiner and studied architecture at Universität Kassel. From 2011 to 2016, he worked as a Scientific Assistant at Technische Universität Graz, where he coordinated the ABB Robotic Research and Teaching Laboratory and earned his PhD with distinction in 2016. From 2016 to 2019, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Singapore University of Technology and Design and MIT, investigating combinations of unprocessed natural construction materials and digital fabrication methods.

At HBC, Felix holds the newly established endowed professorship “Produktions- und Automatisierungstechnik im Holzbau” within the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Project Management, strengthening the university’s focus on timber construction and digitalization.

Thank you, Felix, for your outstanding research, generous collaboration, and dedication to the institute’s development. On behalf of the entire ICD team and all ITECH students, we wish you every success in your new role at HBC!

28/09/2026

Can a drone hand a linear building element directly to a climbing robot, or can it deliver the strut for later pickup?

At eCAADe 2026 in Lübeck, Xingjie Xie presented “Towards Heterogeneity in Collective Robotic Construction: Material Hand-Offs within a Team of Climbing and Aerial Robots.”

Xingjie is a PhD exchange researcher from Tongji University conducting research at ICD, University of Stuttgart. His research stay was partially supported by an IntCDC Incoming Grant.

The paper compares direct handoff with delivery to a shared workspace. In indoor tests of the aerial robot, all indirect deliveries reached the target zone, while hovering became less stable with longer struts. A complete robot-to-robot handoff is the next step.
The work is co-authored by Samarth Uttam, Samuel Leder, Philip F. Yuan, and Achim Menges.

23/09/2026

🌲 We are happy to announce a world first in timber construction!

The demonstrator in Remscheid marks the world’s first successful construction of a point-supported, multi-axial long-span flat slab in timber–concrete composite construction. The underlying building system has been under development for the past two years as part of the UniversalTimberSlab research project at the University of Stuttgart, funded by the European Innovation Council under Horizon Europe. For the client, Future Cleantech Architects, the system was realised at full scale for the first time within only three months, from the start of planning to completion.

📐 The demonstrator represents a single bay of the novel slab construction system. Measuring 9 × 5 metres and only 36 centimetres in height, it is as slender as a comparable reinforced-concrete flat slab while requiring approximately two-thirds less concrete.

✅ In front of 200 visitors of the Future Cleantech Festival, the demonstrator was successfully tested with a load of 20 tonnes on top of its self-weight. This verified the structural capacity for highly loaded office buildings with superimposed dead loads of 1.4 kN/m² and live loads of 3.0 kN/m². The maximum measured deflection was only 12 millimetres, while the eigenfrequency exceeded 8 Hz.

🔧 The innovative floor segments were manufactured from glued-laminated-timber by the HASSLACHER Group and assembled by Dünschede Holzbau in just two days — several decisive milestones on the path towards widespread application of the UniversalTimberSlab in multi-storey timber construction.

🇪🇺 Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101161103.

For more information about the project, please visit our website.

https://universaltimberslab.eu/remscheid

© Image Credits: ©ICD/ITKE/IntCDC University of Stuttgart

14/09/2026

Mac users, this one’s for you. After years as Windows-only, our free optimization plugin for Grasshopper now runs natively on Apple Silicon. That makes Opossum the only fully free Grasshopper optimizer on both platforms.

What’s new under the hood:
– Bayesian optimization (TPE)
– Direct search (MADS)
– Hypervolume estimation (HYPE)

We also retired MACO, MOEA/D, NSGA-II and NSPSO, which were underperforming. Fewer options, better results.
The interface got a refresh too, with a resizable window, clearer button labels and a cleaner layout.

Developed at . Free to download on Food4Rhino or via the Rhino Package Manager.

© Video credits: ICD University of Stuttgart

11/09/2026

Research Group Leader CHRISTOPH ZECHMEISTER (Christoph Zechmeister) has completed his work at ICD University of Stuttgart. He is now a professor at Florida International University School of Architecture (FIU School of Architecture).

Christoph joined ICD in 2018, he completed his PhD in 2024 with distinction and was leading the Computational Fiber Architecture Research Group at ICD, which focuses on developing and implementing methods for designing and fabrication large-scale fibrous building systems.

Christoph´s research at ICD focused on developing methods and processes for designing and fabrication large-scale fibre composite structures, utilizing diverse material systems from carbon and glass fibres, to pioneering explorations into natural fibres and bio-resins.

His research led directly to the construction of the Hybrid Flax Pavilion, Wangen im Allgäu, the Fibrous Tectonics installation at MAXXI, Rome, Maison Fibre for the Venice Biennale 2021, Texoversum Reutlingen, and the BUGA Fiber Pavilion.

Christoph was additionally part of the research team for the livMatS Pavilion, an ITECH studio project which constitutes the first building ever with a load-bearing structure that is entirely made of robotically wound flax fibre. He additionally supervised Master’s thesis projects in our ITECH Master Studio Master of Science programme and has widely published and lectured.
Prior to joining ICD, Christoph worked as an architect and designer in several renowned architectural offices, including Baumschlager Eberle in Zürich, Switzerland, and UN Studio in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He earned his Master of Science in Architecture degree with honors from Vienna University of Technology, and he holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Information from ETH Zürich.

Thank you, Christoph, for your outstanding research and extraordinary dedication to the institute’s development. On behalf of the entire ICD team and all ITECH students, we wish you every success in your new role at FIU School of Architecture! 🐾

25/06/2026

Fresh from the ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference () in Singapore: MAVE, a framework pairing a multi-agent LLM system with augmented reality for interactive design and robotic fabrication.

The work proposes five grounding strategies that help LLM agents understand what’s being built, what the user is referring to, and what actions are available to enable human-machine collaboration. Tested through ablation studies and a hands-on workshop with 16 students who developed their own interactive projects using MAVE.

Congratulations to co-authors Xiliu Yang, Samuel Slezak, Lasath Siriwardena, Felix Amtsberg and Achim Menges at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction, University of Stuttgart.

Full paper: https://doi.org/10.1145/3800645.3813008

For more info, please visit our website.

09/06/2026

We are excited to announce multiple open Research Associate positions at the Department for Computing in Architecture at , directed by Thomas Wortmann.

ICD/CA sits at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and computer science, with a focus on artificial intelligence methods. Much of our research is tied to the Cluster of Excellence IntCDC Universität Stuttgart, which is a leading research center in the field of computational architecture, engineering and construction, and spans four areas: Performance-informed Design, Material-informed Design and Fabrication, Representation and Generation of Building Designs, and Digital Twins and AI for Human-Robot Collaboration.

Currently, ICD/CA is looking for research associates (TV-L E13, 75%) specifically for the following topics:

• Digital twins for On-Site Robotic Construction, in the context of the IntCDC research project 41-1 as well as a new EIC Pathfinder project.
• AI for Building Construction Detailing, in the context of the new Central Innovation Program for SMEs “AI for Building Design” at the KI-Bauplanung Innovationsnetzwerk.

Successful candidates will hold a master's degree in architecture or computer science, bring strong Python programming skills, and demonstrate motivation for interdisciplinary, independent research. Experience with PyTorch and/or ROS, architectural practice, and German language skills are appreciated.

In return, we offer the opportunity to pursue doctoral research alongside interdisciplinary partners at ICD, join the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS) graduate school, contribute to teaching in the international ITECH MSc programme, and take part in the exciting new funding period of Cluster of Excellence IntCDC.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis with an initial deadline of Friday, 19 June.

For more info, please visit our website.

Come join a growing team of excellent researchers and help us to push our research on AI for AEC to the next level!

© Image credits: ICD/CA University of Stuttgart

22/05/2026

We are excited to announce that IntCDC researchers Fabian Kannenberg (ICD) and David Forster (IBB) won the Third Prize at the Nemetschek Innovation Award 2026 for their project “Redundancy Explorer: Policy Learning for Structurally-Informed Design Space Exploration”.

The Nemetschek Innovation Award is dedicated to ground-breaking innovations in Artificial Intelligence for the Built World throughout the entire lifecycle of built facilities and aims to recognize application-oriented innovations. It is funded by the Nemetschek Innovation Foundation (Nemetschek Innovationsstiftung) and organized by the TUM Georg Nemetschek Institute.

The Award Ceremony was held as part of the TUM GNI Symposium on May 19th in Munich, Germany.

More information about the award can be found here: https://www.mdsi.tum.de/gni/news/news-single-view/article/nemetschek-innovation-award-call-for-applications/

© Image credits: ICD University of Stuttgart
© Photo credits: TUM Georg Nemetschek Institute

15/05/2026

We are delighted to share that the Wangen Tower has been recognized at the Holzbaupreis Baden-Württemberg.

Presented by the Ministerium für Ernährung, Ländlichen Raum und Verbraucherschutz Baden-Württemberg (MLR) as part of the Holzbau-Offensive, the award honors exemplary timber projects that demonstrate innovation, architectural quality, and the future potential of timber construction.

The jury highlighted how the tower transforms an inherent property of wood into a constructive principle: flat-fabricated cross-laminated timber elements are shaped through controlled drying and become load-bearing curved components. In this way, the material’s natural shrinkage gives rise to an innovative and elegant structure in which height, form, and function merge into a unique viewing experience.

We are grateful for this recognition and proud to see the project acknowledged among outstanding timber buildings from across Baden-Württemberg.

For more information about the project, please visit our website.
https://www.icd.uni-stuttgart.de/projects/wangen-tower/

© Image Credits: Felix Kästle, Martin Looser

30/04/2026

We’re excited to share our new peer-reviewed paper, “Toward autonomous timber construction using distributed robotic perception system in coordination with a tower crane,” published in Automation in Construction.

Digital prefabrication has advanced timber construction, but large-scale timber elements are still largely assembled manually on construction sites. This research explores how a digitally controlled tower crane can work together with distributed robotic perception units embedded in timber components.
The system uses compact robotic units to support vision-based pose estimation, multi-view data fusion, and crane-guided assembly of large-scale cross-laminated timber components under realistic construction-site conditions.

Congratulations to first author Nils Opgenorth and co-authors Jack Michael Otto and Achim Menges.

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy — EXC 2120/1–390831618 — and by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) as part of the Zukunft Bau research funding program, within the project “Lights-Off On-Site Timber Construction” — funding code 10.08.18.7-23.36. Additional financial support was provided by ZÜBLIN Timber.

The open-access paper can be read through the following link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2026.106973

© Image credits: Opgenorth, N., Otto, J. M., & Menges, A. (2026)

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