4th Residential Building Design & Construction Conference
The 4th Residential Building Design & Construction Conference (RBDCC) held concurrently with the 26th Annual PHRC Housing Conference on February 28-March 1, 2018 in State College, Pennsylvania, was the largest to date. Over 100 abstracts were submitted by people from 13 different countries. This conference provided a forum for researchers, architects, engineers, other design professionals, product manufacturers, builders, developers, and code officials to disucss the state-of-the-art technologies and research findings in residential building design and construction. The event also included an evening with labratory tours and the demonstration of a robot that 3D prints concrete followed by a networking reception in the Hintz Family Alumni Center highlighting Penn State graduate student research. In conjunction with the PHRC Housing Conference, another networking happy hour focusing on industry exhibitors and undergraduate student work was held at the Penn Stater.
Sessions at the conference covered a broad range of topics including:
- Building science education
- Tiny houses
- Building enclosures
- Senior housing and aging-in-place
- Passive house and high performance housing
- Resiliency and housing
- UN Global Building Network
- Cross laminated timber
- HVAC
- Energy modeling
- Residential BIM
- Concrete and 3D printing
- Innovative materials
- Policy & social components in housing
- Community impacts
Two keynote speakers were invited for the conference. Prof. Dr-Ing. Bohumil Kasal, director of The Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research at Fraunhofer Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut in Germany, presented on German Residential Construction: What Can We Learn from It? Professor Ryan E. Smith, associate dean of research and community engagement & director of the Integrated Technology in Architecture Center at the University of Utah in the College of Architecture + Planning, presented on Global Innovations in Residential Building: Prefabrication, Modularization & Automation.
Full conference proceedings and videos of the keynote presentations will be available here.
Conference Schedule
