WELCOME
The digitalization of manufacturing is radically changing how we fabricate and construct structures. Today we can make things that were too complex for manufacture just a few years ago. To fully leverage the new manufacturing possibilities and make our structures lighter, faster, safer, or any other objective we seek, we need to re-think our approach to structural design. In the carstensen group we work with developing structural- and topology optimization frameworks that improves design. We work with design at the conceptual stage, develop algorithmic details for implementation of new  manufacturing considerations and take optimized designs out of the computational space to experimentally investigate their behavior. We are based at MIT in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The 
structures we are interested in can have any size; it can be a high-rise building, a part or component of a larger structure or the architecture of a porous material.