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Join us for a conversation with Mohamed Ismail, assistant professor of Architecture at UVA, on his dissertation “Reshaping Concrete: Empowering Development Through Low-Carbon Structures.”

Currently seeking AIA learning credits

Ismail’s dissertation proposes a flexible methodology for the design and analysis of materially efficient concrete elements that can reduce the economic and environmental costs of urban construction. Designed for the constraints of [Less Economically Developed Countries], structural elements are optimized to reduce the embodied carbon associated with the concrete and reinforcing steel while resisting the same loads of a standard building structure.

About Mohamed Ismail

Mohamed Ismail is a PhD Candidate in Building Technology at MIT and a 2020 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. He is trained as both a civil engineer (BS, Duke University) and architect (MArch, University of Virginia), and studies the potential for structural and material optimization in the alleviation of housing insecurity in the Global South. Mohamed has taught classes in construction systems, visual representation, parametric workflows, and structural design at UVA, Northeastern University, and MIT. What excites Mohamed most is not only the tools and resources now available in the field of structural design, but their potential application and immediate viability in the world today. At MIT, Mohamed works with Professor Caitlin Mueller and the Digital Structures Lab to design low-cost, low-carbon structural components for housing in developing regions.