Dr Elham Mousavian
Job title:
Lecturer in Architectural Structures
Office:
Minto House, Room B.161A
Research Output:
Edinburgh Research Explorer linkBiography
I am a lecturer in Architectural Structures at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. I am currently the course organizer for Technology and Environment 2B, which aims to expand architecture students' structural comprehension. I support students in structural design and form-finding through tutoring across various design courses.
My research focuses on Structural Stone, design through reuse, and the development of CAD tools for Integrated Architectural–structural Design. I have worked on structural stone and integrated architectural–structural design since her PhD studies at the Iran University of Science and Technology, part of which was undertaken at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms at TU Wien, Austria. I continued this research after being awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF) for the SiDMACIB project at the Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture, University of Naples Federico II, Italy.
Research interests
- Computational Form-finding
- Form-finding of Stone Assemblies
- Design through Reuse
- Construction-aware design of interlocking assemblies
- Water management in AEC
I am a lecturer in Architectural Structures at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. I am currently the course organizer for Technology and Environment 2B, which aims to expand architecture students' structural comprehension. I support students in structural design and form-finding through tutoring across various design courses.
Research
Research
I am an expert in structurally-informed architectural design and form-finding of architectural structures with complex geometries. My two main current research directions are:
1. Optimisation of Discrete Stone Assemblies
Ongoing Project - Computational Layout Optimization of Structural Stone Assemblies (funded by Edinburgh Innovation). In this project we introduce a novel computational form-finding approach to segment free-form structures into discrete assemblies of convex and concave interlocking components, optimising their joint layouts to maximise load-bearing capacity.
Finished Project - SiDMACIB: Structurally-informed Design of Masonry Assemblages Composed of Interlocking Blocks (MSCA-IF Grant 791235), at the Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture (DiSt), University of Naples Federico II (UNINA), Italy. Through this project, I developed one of the first digital frameworks for the structurally informed and construction-aware design of free-form assemblages composed of interlocking and non-rigid (breakable) masonry blocks.
2. Uncertainty-Aware Structural Design Through Reuse — Optimisation of structures using available stock elements, accounting for uncertainties in their material and mechanical properties.
