Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Open today 4 PM - 11 PM
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Open today 4 PM - 11 PM
Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. Lecture Series
About the Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. Lecture Series
The annual Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. Lecture was established in 2003 to bring the finest university professors to speak on subjects related to the Library´s collections. Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. was the first chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Linda Hall Library. Under his leadership the Halls’ bequest for the creation of a public library in Kansas City was used to establish this library devoted to science, engineering, and technology. Mr. Bartlett served on the Board until his death in 1964.
22nd Annual Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. Lecture | September 26, 2024
The world's urban population is estimated to reach 2.6 billion people by 2050. To accommodate this population increase, an additional 65,000 square meters of floor space needs to be constructed per hour for the next three decades. Yet, the productivity of the construction industry has stagnated or fallen for decades in many advanced economies. Construction activity also generates an enormous amount of waste. This excessive waste and the lack of construction productivity, coupled with the high projected societal demand for new floor space, suggests that we need new approaches to design, fabricate and construct building forms.
In this lecture, Professor Adriaenssens explores the most inventive analog, digital, and AI methodologies, and craft-based, robotic, and Augmented Reality construction techniques, demonstrating their use in the realization of sustainable building forms.
The Speaker
Sigrid Adriaenssens is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. Professor Adriaenssens research interests like in the mechanics of large-span structural surfaces under extreme loading and more recently under construction. She has been working on a comprehensive framework with advanced analytical formulations, numerical form finding and optimization approaches, fluid/structure interaction, and machine learning models and algorithms to open new avenues for accelerated discoveries and automated optimal designs. In terms of applications, she has used this framework to successfully innovate structural and architectural systems ranging from macroscale adaptive shading shell devices to large-scale storm surge membrane barriers.
She is the co-editor of the International Journal of Space Structures and directs the Form Finding Lab at Princeton University, where she teaches courses on (non-)linear mechanics of solids and slender structures, structural design, and the integration of engineering and the arts.
Past Lectures
2023: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars, Avi Loeb, Harvard University
2022: Biomedical Engineering and Medicines of the Future, Mark Saltzman, Yale University
2021: Tiny Conspiracies: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria, Bonnie Bassler, Princeton University
2020: The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, Richard Wrangham, Harvard University
2019: Cosmic Tremors: The Quest for Colliding Black Holes, Priya Natarajan, Yale University
2018: How the Social Brain Builds Itself, But Sometimes Doesn't: The Biological Roots of Autism, Sam Wang, Princeton University
2017: What Darwin Didn't Know: Evolution Since the Origin of Species, Andrew Berry, Harvard University
2016: The Evolution of Beauty, Richard Prum, Yale University
2015: TMI: Identity and Privacy in the Digital Age, Edward Felten, Princeton University
2014: The Lost Art of Finding our Way, John Huth, Harvard University
2013: The Particle at the End of the Universe: The Hunt for the Higgs Boson, Sean Carroll, Califonia Institute of Technology
2012: The Evolution of Economic Irrationality: Insights from Monkeys, Laurie Santos, Yale University
2011: Who Discovered the Periodic Table? The Anatomy of a Priority Dispute, Michael Gordin, Princeton University
2010: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, Harvard University
2009: How to See a Black Hole, Charles Bailyn, Yale University
2008: From Cold Quicksilver to Levitating Trains: The History and Promise of Superconductivity, Robert Cava, Princeton University
2007: The Theory of Everything, Brian Greene, Columbia University
2006: Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, and Free Will, David Layzer, Harvard University
2005: Meteorite Impacts and Extinctions, Karl Turekian, Yale University
2004: The Extravagant Universe, Robert Kirshner, Harvard University
2003: Structure as an Art Form, David Billington, Princeton University