Event
October 29, 2025 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
BSA Space290 Congress StreetBoston, MA
Eric Höweler, photo by Conor Doherty.
Design for Construction book cover Courtesy of Amateur Architecture Studio. Photograph by Laksana Studio.
This event is Free and open to the public.
Design Enthusiasts
Join us for a dialogue between Mark Mulligan, Chair of the Department of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Eric Höweler of Höweler + Yoon Architecture about the topics in his new book Design for Construction.
Arguing that a gulf exists between conceptual thinking and the constructed building, Design for Construction explores projects and practices that span the gap by thinking through materials and processes in what Eric Höweler calls a tectonic imagination. This imagination is not unbounded, but instead conceptualizes architecture within the continuum of past practices and disciplinary knowledge, as well as material and technical possibilities of the present.
Organized into ten chapters, Design for Construction covers topics such as means and methods, part-to-whole relationships, material research, risk mitigation, construction sequencing, digital fabrication, ethical material sourcing, and circular construction practices. Höweler provides a careful analysis of over 200 buildings by practices including Amateur Architecture Studio, Barkow Leibinger, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Ensemble, Gluck +, Herzog & de Meuron, Johnston Marklee, MASS Design, NADAAA, Neri&Hu, OMA, and SANAA.
Höweler's insights offer a means for architects to re-engage directly with design and construction so they can better grapple with difficult questions of climate change, material scarcity, and social impact.
Eric Höweler (b. Cali, Colombia) is an architect with 28 years of experience in practice and a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is co-founder of Höweler + Yoon Architecture LLP, a multidisciplinary practice working between architecture, public space, and media. For seven years, Eric served as an Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, where he was the senior designer on the 118 story ICC Tower in Hong Kong. Höweler was a Senior Designer at Diller + Scofidio where he worked on institutional and cultural projects, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Juilliard School/Lincoln Center in New York.
Mark Mulligan is an architect and educator whose research focuses on modern and contemporary Japanese architecture and urbanism. He is currently Professor of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology, having previously served as Department Chair and Associate Dean at Wentworth and M.Arch Program Director at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is editor of Nurturing Dreams: Collected Essays on Architecture and the City by Fumihiko Maki.
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