Class at IE: industrialisation applied to urban planning and architecture

José María de Cárdenas, co-founding partner of EDDEA, taught a class to students on the Master in Business for Architecture & Design at the Madrid campus of IE School of Architecture and Design, one of Europe’s leading specialist academic institutions, whose programmes combine design, innovation and management.

A hundred and sixty years after Cerdá

The session centred on industrialisation in urban planning and architecture, and began with a question: what science lies behind cities? A hundred and sixty years ago, Cerdá proposed a set of standardised planning principles to achieve optimal living conditions, formulated almost as an equation. The class explored how to respond to that same ambition today with digital tools.

CITYPLAIN in five steps

De Cárdenas set out the method behind CITYPLAIN, the studio’s urban design software: site programming, generation of the urban fabric, configuration of the built mass, design evaluation through indicators and a cost plan, and optimisation by comparing scenarios. The tool makes it possible to generate, evaluate and compare several alternatives in minutes rather than months.

The Euro 60 modular platform

Among the cases presented was the Euro 60 Modular Platform, designed for FSK and DSK, leading Russian companies with which the studio has delivered more than 9,500 homes in five years. Built from a kit of modular 2D elements, it allows affordable residential buildings of between 6 and 24 storeys to be constructed, including both the structural shell and the complete finished envelope.