S6: Research and Data
July 18, 2025
Location: Martin Luther King Memorial Library
Led by: Emily Brueger and Valerie Long
This session explored the capacity of data and research to generate new possibilities for affordable housing, project delivery, and material responsibility. Speakers emphasized the importance of centering data and research on creativity, collaboration and stewardship. Scholars were challenged to widen the scope of their imagination for research and data – from generating creative uses for under utilized structures, to tracking materials and to inspiring architects and designers to drive change in the AEC industry through their decisions.
Act 1: KTGY Research and Development Studio
Marissa Kasdan
Marissa Kasdan illustrated how the R&D studio at KTGY reveals opportunities in unexpected places through adaptable reuse —like KTGY’s award-winning concepts for converting parking structures into housing. Kasdan shared a diversity of both built and unbuilt projects, which demonstrated how designing beyond the parameters of a project can provide foundations for creative solutions in the real world. To cap her module, she led the cohort in a Concept Charette, inviting scholars to identify their own expertise, distinct challenges of the world around them, and how their expertise can be leveraged for addressing these challenges.
Ruben Quesada
Ruben Antonio Quesada, CKLDP alumnus and CEO of Sabana, explored how AI can be utilized to streamline material selection by creating a single source platform for horizontal comparison and information collection and distribution. His prior experience as a Project Architect inspired him to become a co-founder of the start-up. He remarked that a single project can require thousands of decisions with vendors with various presentations of product data. Understanding how these decisions compound project after project, Sabana creates a frame of reference for comparison to improve the material selection process and overall project delivery.
Act 2: Data for Architecture
Candon Murphy introduced a call to action for this cohort, and all AEC professionals, to recognize our potential to orient global markets towards sustainable materials by aligning human values with our buying power. As HOK’s Material Resource Manager, Murphy’s commitment to sustainability goes beyond collecting material data specified on projects. Her presentation demonstrates how moving towards the AIA 2030 Commitment requires continual firmwide education, robust networks within the firm and across the industry, and reflection on benchmark data for constant improvement. With a presentation of quantitative and qualitative data and ready-to-use applications, Murphy empowered scholars to take on data collection and analysis as iterative tools of their own for sustainable change.
Candon Murphy
Act 3: Sustainable Material Tracking
Gary Martinez
The session culminated with a tour of the award-winning, sustainable, and lively MLK Jr. Memorial Library. Gary Martinez explained how the legacies of Martin Luther King and Mies Van Der Rohe are expressed in this project through form and function. Scholars learned how the modernization of the historic building simultaneously preserves the architectural principles of Van Der Rohe while redefining the bounds of a public library as Reverend King did for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
