Rob Whitehead

Rob Whitehead, AIA, LEED AP, is a licensed architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University where he teaches structural design, integrated design studios, and design-build. His design work, research, and writing is centered on the conjunction of architecture, structural design, and construction in pedagogy and practice. He was named one of 30 Most Admired Educators by Design Intelligence journal (2014). He received the Iowa Educator Award by the Iowa Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (2014), and the Emerging Faculty Award by the Building Technology Educators’ Society (BTES) in 2011. His structural design course sequence, Structural Technology in Practice, was awarded the Creative Achievement Award (2014) by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). He is the author of Structures by Design: Thinking, Making, Breaking (2019), a co-author of Design-Tech: Building Technology for Architects (2014) with Tom Leslie and Jason Alread, and various other publications and proceedings related to architectural structures and education. His work explores ways of critically integrating structural design considerations of process, production, and performance into technically engaging and experientially rich architecture. The research has manifest itself as three inter-connected aspects of structural design, architecture, and education: Thinking, Making, and Breaking. Thinking: Structural Design Pedagogy. This scholarship of teaching and learning looks at ways to develop & integrate alternative pedagogical methods for teaching building technology integration and analysis including haptic learning techniques and design-centric lab work. Making: Structures in Service & Design/Build Experiments. This service-learning oriented design and construction work focuses on applying structural and material design principles towards vexing problems (e.g., Designing for Disaster Relief and Resiliency) and the creation of gathering shelters and community spaces for non-profit groups. Breaking: History of Formative Failures & Innovation. This research explores the role of productive failures in design, particularly in the design ideation, integration and performance of innovative structural systems (most frequently mid-20th century, pre-computational long span structures--Saarinen, Otto, etc.).