About

Sean Ahlquist is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He directs the Lab for Socio-material Architectures and is currently the director of the Master of Science in Digital Material Technologies (DMT). His work addresses architecture’s pressing need to leverage computational design techniques and technologies for constructing novel material systems aimed at generating inclusionary spaces, particularly for communities identifying as disabled. Ahlquist’s research centers on the fabrication of malleable, sensory-responsive environments and their role in fostering social behavior, with a focus on individuals with disabilities such as children with autism spectrum disorder in public educational spaces. His investigations involve close collaboration with fields including materials science, civil and environmental engineering, and industry partners in automotive and aerospace design, utilizing industrial knitting technologies to develop innovative material systems. Ahlquist’s work is informed by personal experience with his autistic daughter, which drives his focus on architecture’s influence on behavior in public environments. His collaborations extend to the autism community and broader disability communities, involving partnerships with kinesiology, psychiatry, behavioral science, and data science. He actively engages with the local Ann Arbor community through collaborations with the public school system, the HandsOn Children’s Museum, and the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living. His projects have been installed and studied at various sites, including children’s museums, classrooms, therapy centers, and prominent exhibitions such as the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2021 Big Umbrella Festival at Lincoln Center, and the Common Senses Festival in Omaha. Ahlquist teaches across all academic programs at Taubman College, challenging students to develop design methodologies rooted in disability theory and equity, combined with technical skills in material fabrication and computational design. His educational efforts include multi-year collaborations with community organizations, aiming to develop material systems that serve as work and social spaces, with future plans to expand partnerships with therapy centers and secondary schools for students with disabilities.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Computer Science
• Visual arts
• Composite material
• Structural engineering
• Materials science
• Engineering
• Architectural engineering
• Art
• Aesthetics

Selected publications

• Prioritizing Sensory Features Over Simulation in Material Systems: A Design Framework Supporting Multi-Material Knitting Research

  ACADIA quarterly · 2023-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Prioritizing Sensory Features Over Simulation in Material Systems: A Design Framework Supporting Multi-Material Knitting Research

  ACADIA quarterly · 2023-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• From Evo-Devo Strategies to a Way Forward With Eco-social Evo-Devo for Generative Design Processes1

  2022-07-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  From Evo-Devo Strategies to a Way Forward With Eco-social Evo-Devo for Generative Design Processes 1 - 1 - Toward Extending the Polymorphism of Metabolic Architecture and the Integration of Diversities

  PublisherDOI

• Socio-Material Capacities for Ecotopian Designs

  2022-07-19 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Every design move inserts an unavoidable bias. A particular juxtaposition of angles, proportions, steps and smooth surfaces evokes the perception of a slide and subsequently implies its intended manner of operation. Such authorship of geometric design and architectural narratives unavoidably exacerbates the social distinctions between typical, abled, diverse and differently abled. Efforts to dissolve these distinctions often align with two motivations: empathy for an underserved community, or a scholarly inquiry of the factors that define the ill-fittedness of certain communities to the physical, social world. In this chapter the author argues that each is fraught with limitations and ultimately inhibit diversity as being an expression unto architectural form. As with the example of the slide for kids, experience equals knowledge and is constructed in situ. Any a priori narrative, motivation or assumption is then counter-productive to the formation of such knowledge. In this chapter, the author by focusing on “autism” refers to the meaning of ability as a social paradigm and the socially constructed nature of ability, often used in ableism to draw lines of distinction between disabled and nondisabled. The discussion is that this is architecture’s discord in the failure to see the social body—not as physical form, but as collective—being constituted of interdependencies and the diversity that exists within it. To function, as with failure, success is collective and defined by a shared form of dialogue. In this chapter by analyzing agency of materiality and the technical properties of elasticity the author finds a way for compliance becoming the primary design driver. The discussion that precision, more appropriately exhaustiveness, in deploying this property across all material scales embeds responsivity to differential degrees of sensorial interaction—that is, requisite variety. The fact is that demand for interaction through “agent-like behavior on both sides” is met through the material’s response of forgiveness and resistance to the physical transformation of the social actor. The “hand” of the textile changes with the stretch of the material—as it increases its want to rebound—or in the movement across the contours of surfaces as changes in pattern become identified. Reverberations ensue across the system of interconnected materials at the imposition of the body—exuding a real awareness for owning the behavior of environment and ecology of the context.

  PublisherDOI

• Numerical Simulation of the Mechanical Behavior of a Weft-Knitted Carbon Fiber Composite under Tensile Loading

  Polymers · 2022 · 15 citations

  • Materials science
  • Composite material
  • Structural engineering

  Knitted textiles are a popular reinforcement in polymer composites for their high drape properties and superior impact energy absorption, making them suitable for specific composite components. Nevertheless, limited attention has been paid to modeling the mechanical behavior of knitted fabric composites since knitted textiles generally offer lower stiffness and strength. This study presents a 3D finite element (FE) modeling of a precise geometrical model of weft-knitted carbon fiber thermoplastic composite to better understand its nonlinear mechanical behavior and interface damage mechanisms under tension. Toward this end, a representative volume element (RVE) of the weft-knitted fabric composite with periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) is generated based on actual dimensions. The validity of the textile RVE to represent the macroscopic behavior was evaluated prior to analyzing the composite. The effect of fiber tow/matrix debonding during tension on the mechanical behavior of the composite is investigated using the cohesive zone model (CZM). Finally, the predicted results of the mechanical behavior of the composite with and without considering the interface failure are compared with the experimental measurements. It is found that the fiber tow/matrix interfacial strength has a significant effect on the tensile performance of the knitted fabric composites, particularly when they are subjected to a large strain. According to the simulation results, the highest tensile performance of the composite is achieved when the interfacial debonding is prevented. However, considering the fiber/matrix debonding in the modeling is essential to achieve a good agreement with the experimental results. In addition, it is concluded that stretching the fabric before composite manufacturing can substantially increase the tensile stiffness of the knitted composite.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Active-Casting

  ACADIA quarterly · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Active-Casting explores the use of bespoke computer numerical controlled (CNC) manufactured knits to produce volumetric textile formwork for casting glass-fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC). As a collaboration between experts in architecture, textile fabrication, and civil engineering, the research investigates multimaterial, functionally graded knit formwork as a fully seamless system to cast concrete. Working with controlled characteristics such as elasticity and stiffness of yarn type and knit structure, the soft textile is conceived as the vessel that defines the performative characteristics of volume, geometry, and surface detail. With only a minimal frame to suspend the volumetric cast, hydrostatic pressure “inflates” the fabric formwork, creating a dynamic form-finding process that eliminates the need for typical molding materials such as wood or foam. While active formfinding processes for CNC knit casting have been explored as an open-face, GFRC-sprayed system, the Active-Casting process produces a finished surface on all faces, embedded with expressions in form and surface detail from the knitted formwork. The precast units using this process reduce the amount of construction waste for formwork production, proposes a more automated fashion for manufacturing the formwork, and produces casts with complex geometries difficult to accomplish with traditional casting methods.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Architecture Gets it Wrong

  Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Sean Ahlquist Associate Professor of Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan ARCHITECTURE GETS IT WRONG: BUT THAT’S OKAY IF IT’S READY FOR THE AUTHORSHIP OF AN OTHERNESS We’re at a moment in time where a history of architecture shaped by a narrow set of viewpoints is being more heavily scrutinized for its ramifications in exacerbating social inequities. Personally, I see the prejudice of architectures that compete against my daughter and her worldview constructed through autism spectrum disorder. That architecture fails, at times, its okay but only if it has the capacity to be reshaped. If it can be indeterminately reshaped by otherly actions and social motivations to form a common ground that not just welcomes but is of my daughter’s “neuro-atypicality”. Diversity implies unknowing-ness. This talk will discuss whether architecture can transcend its own authorship and dismiss its desire to narrate from a set of inevitably constrained viewpoints, and unfurl the means that are necessary for architecture to be party to crafting a social and material language of diversity.

  Publisher

• Negotiating human engagement and the fixity of computational design: Toward a performative design space for the differently-abled bodymind

  International Journal of Architectural Computing · 2020 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Architectural engineering

  Computational design affords agency: the ability to orchestrate the material, spatial, and technical architectural system. In this specific case, it occurs through enhanced, authored means to facilitate making and performance—typically driven by concerns of structural optimization, material use, and responsivity to environmental factors—of an atmospheric rather than social nature. At issue is the positioning of this particular manner of agency solely with the architect auteur. This abruptly halts—at the moment in which fabrication commences—the ability to amend, redefine, or newly introduce fundamentally transformational constituents and their interrelationships and, most importantly, to explore the possibility for extraordinary outcomes. When the architecture becomes a functional, social, and cultural entity, in the hands of the idealized abled-bodied user, agency—especially for one of an otherly body or mind—is long gone. Even an empathetic auteur may not be able to access the motivations of the differently-abled body and neuro-divergent mind, effectively locking the constraints of the design process, which creates an exclusionary system to those beyond the purview of said auteur. It can therefore be deduced that the mechanisms or authors of a conventional computational design process cannot eradicate the exclusionary reality of an architectural system. Agency is critical, yet a more expansive terminology for agent and agency is needed. The burden to conceive of capacities that will always be highly temporal, social, unpredictable, and purposefully unknown must be shifted far from the scope of the traditional directors of the architectural system. Agency, and who it is conferred upon, must function in a manner that dissolves the distinctions between the design, the action of designing, the author of design, and those subjected to it.

  PublisherDOI

• Expanding the Systematic Agencyof a Material System

  ACADIA quarterly · 2019-01-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Computational design and fabrication have reached an accomplished level of ubiquity and proficiency in the field of architecture, in both academia and practice. Materiality driving structure, responsiveness, and spatial organization can be seen to evolve, in kind, with the capabilities to fabricate deeper material hierarchies. Such maturity of a procedural material-driven approach spurs a need to shift from the dictations of how to explorations of why material efficiencies, bespoke aesthetics, and performativity are critical to a particular architecture, requiring an examination of linkages between approach, techniques, and process. The material system defines a branch of architectural research utilizing bespoke computational techniques to generate performative material capacities that are inextricably linked to both internal and external forces and energies. This paper examines such a self-referential view to define an expanded ecological approach that integrates new modes of design agency and shift the material system from closed-loop relationship with site to open-ended reciprocation with human behavior. The critical need for this capacity is shown in applications of novel textile hybrid material systems—as sensorially-responsive environments for children with the neurological autism spectrum disorder—in ongoing research titled Social Sensory Architectures. Through engaging fabrication across all material scales, manners of elastic responsivity are shown, through a series of feasibility studies, to exhibit a capacity for children to become design agents in exploring the beneficial interrelationship of sensorimotor agency and social behavior. The paper intends to contribute a theoretical approach by which novel structural capacities of a material system can support a larger ecology of social and behavioral agency.

  PublisherDOI

• Reciprocal Relationships of Materiality and Human Engagement

  2019-12-06 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The discourse surrounding advanced material research in the field of architecture has, traditionally, sought novel design opportunities through aligning automated bespoke manufacturing, material performance and environmental responsiveness. Where material characteristics, crafted through automated production their subsequent behavior define the performative architectural system, then it is typically called a material system. Discussing architecture’s ramifications on health and social function prompts scrutiny of the material system’s often self-referential dialogue – of intra-systemic relationships of material hierarchies and atmospheric forces. Exploring an eco-social performativity requires the material system’s embrace of the extra-systemic – namely, human agency deemed inextricable from the actions shaping perception of the material system. Accordingly, the performative condition is no longer a priori but situational – a temporal state only proffered by the inquisitor-actor. The material system dramatically shifts to that of agent with unknown capacity. Only through reciprocal perturbations between extra- and material-systemic agents do ill-defined performative natures become elaborated.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Achim Menges

  University of Stuttgart

  17 shared

• Omid Oliyan Torghabehi

  6 shared

• Dillon Erb

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  6 shared

• Moritz Fleischmann

  5 shared

• Tim Kampowski

  3 shared

• Thomas Speck

  University of Freiburg

  3 shared

• Amirreza Moradi

  K.N.Toosi University of Technology

  2 shared

• Mohammad Ravandi

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence (2020)
• Sustainability Catalyst Grants (2024)