Three teams comprising of Architectural, Engineering and Construction Management (AEC) students from Deakin, Curtin and Western Sydney Universities have been announced as finalists for the 2024 Autodesk Challenge Cup, facilitated by AEC industry peak body prefabAUS.

Now into its fifth year, the Autodesk Challenge Cup is a university-based team challenge for AEC students, and is designed to discover the next generation of built environment design professionals that will help propel the industry forward with innovative solutions.

The three shortlisted teams, ‘Hexa’ from Deakin University, VIC; ‘Intersected Generations’ from Curtin University (WA), and ‘Modular Makers’ from Western Sydney University (NSW), were selected from a total of 11 cross-disciplinary teams from Australian universities who participated in the challenge.

This year’s theme was ‘Smart Building; Connected Communities’. The competition saw all participating teams spend the first half of 2024 figuring out design solutions to answer the question: “How can ‘Smart Building’ connect communities, deliver social capital and foster positive health and wellbeing outcomes?”

“This year’s Challenge is incredibly timely as we grapple with housing scarcity and affordability, and we know that the usual way of building is no longer cutting it. These teams have embraced digital design and advanced manufacturing techniques that demonstrate time and waste savings and enhanced building performance through embracing prefabrication and modular building techniques,” prefabAUS executive chair Damien Crough said.

Autodesk’s senior business development executive Allan Chalmers added, “We are thrilled to announce another innovative group of finalists for the Challenge Cup. The way the AEC industry works today is not sustainable or scalable. For the industry to keep pace, it needs to build more projects in a faster and more sustainable way. The answer is industrialised construction, being able to connect design and make from day one – resulting in faster, high-quality projects with less waste.”

The design challenge

The teams were asked to explore how ‘smart’ building practices can be used to create an architectural intervention that supports real intergenerational connections in built environment programmes. They were then tasked with designing a medium-rise accommodation typology of between three and six storeys, co-located with intergenerational shared education and/or community health services.

The winning team and place getters will be named at the annual prefabAUS conference, Offsite 2024 on 28 August in Sydney.

Branko Miletic

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