Caitlin Mueller
Caitlin Mueller is a faculty member at MIT with appointments in Architecture and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She leads the Digital Structures research group, directs the Building Technology program, and serves as Associate Director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. Trained in architecture, structural engineering, computation, and building technology at MIT and Stanford, she joined the MIT faculty in 2014.
Her research integrates architecture, engineering, and computation to develop methods for sustainable, high-performing, and expressive building design and construction. Her group explores computational design, artificial intelligence, and digital fabrication approaches that connect structural efficiency, material circularity, affordability, and architectural expression. Recent projects include robotic assembly of optimized trusses, low-carbon earthen and concrete fabrication systems, algorithmic reuse of salvaged materials, and circular wood products for housing. Through the ODDS & MODS program with architect Sheila Kennedy, Mueller engages students in design pedagogy focused on material reuse and climate action. A full overview of her research publications on these and related topics can be found on her Google Scholar profile.
She has contributed to international conferences including chairing the IASS Symposium (2018) and Advances in Architectural Geometry (2025), both hosted at MIT. Her work has been recognized with honors such as the ACADIA Innovative Research Award (2021), the ACSA Diversity Achievement Award (2022), and Architectural Record’s Innovator of the Year (2025). Her research has been published in over 150 peer-reviewed papers, recognized with seven best paper awards, and realized through built projects including the Sueños con Tierra y Concreto pavilion (2022), installations at the 2025 Venice Biennale (including TREE FORM and VAMO), and Remembering the Future (2025), a tensile sculpture by Janet Echelman at the MIT Museum supported by her team’s software. She is also a co-founder of Forma Systems and Pixelframe, startups advancing computational and circular approaches to structural design.
Digital Structures
Professor Mueller's research group, Digital Structures, works at the interface of architecture, structural engineering, and computation, focusing on the synthetic integration of creative and technical goals in the design and fabrication of buildings, bridges, and other large-scale structures. The group is particularly interested in how digital techniques and tools can play an unexpected, collaborative role in these processes.
MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC)
The MCSC facilitates interdisciplinary collaborations within MIT and empowers industry partners to usher in, adapt to, and prosper in a decarbonized economy and world. Research goals include linking stated company goals to value chains, piloting cross-industry technology, process, and organizational change; and embedding sustainability practice throughout workforce and university education. Professor Mueller is currently Associate Director.
Odds and Mods
ODDS & MODS is a research and design platform for material circularity in architecture. Through projective design, critical thinking, computation, and machine learning (AI) ODDS & MODS seeks to create new architectural possibilities for the reuse of standardized materials (MODS) and geometrically irregular materials (ODDS), that until now have limited the scale up of circular approaches to design and construction. The initiative is co-led by Professors Caitlin Mueller and Sheila Kennedy.
