Design Research: Technology Transformations

A Level 9 micro-credential at the Cork Centre for Architectural Education. Twelve weeks online, one Wednesday morning a week, spent working out what a piece of building technology actually does and how to argue from it.

Code: AT6012
Award: NFQ Level 9, 5 ECTS12 weeks, part-time
Starts: Wednesday 23 September 2026runs to 9 December 2026
Live sessions: Wednesdays 10:00 to 13:00online, every session recorded
Own time: 89 hoursonline, any time
Fee: EUR 500EUR 100 with the 80 per cent HEA subsidy
Applications close: Wednesday 2 September 2026
Taught by: Maroun TabbalCCAE, University College Cork

What the module is for

The module goal, as University College Cork publishes it.

To select and analyse appropriate examples of technical and technological innovations in the built environment which might inform the development of an architectural idea.

Module content

Technologies which influence structural stability, environmental control and constructional techniques and materials; the influence of each on the perceived architectural environment, and; the impact of technological choices on the economics and environmental impact of a design proposal.

What you will be able to do

The four learning outcomes, in the module descriptor's own words.

Identify and analyse appropriate technical and technological frameworks within the area of contemporary architecture.
Demonstrate a critical appreciation of the role of technical and technological frameworks in supporting the implementation of contemporary architectural ideas.
Develop the intellectual content of a project through the use of appropriate technical and technological investigations.
Research and interpret constructional, climatic and structural systems, and be able to demonstrate an innovative or experimental use of these through an architectural project.

How a Wednesday runs

The same four hours every week. The first three are the module. The fourth is shared with the two other CCAE micro-credentials and you take it if you want it.

10:00 to 11:00: Taught hour The week's technical framework, where it comes from, and the arithmetic under it.
11:00 to 12:00: Guest or workshop An invited speaker on the week's subject, or hands on the week's method.
12:00 to 13:00: Working seminar Two projects on the table, the other eight reading them.
13:00 to 14:00: Shared hour, optional Open to learners on AT6012, AT6020 and AT6031 together.

You choose how much of it you attend live.

Every session is recorded and the recordings stay up for the full run of the module. There is no mandatory attendance requirement. The schedule was built around people in full-time work and learners studying remotely, so you can take the module entirely from the recordings and the asynchronous material, or mix live and on-demand week by week.

The twelve weeks

Two weeks of grounding, a field fortnight, then eight deep dives.

Weeks 1 and 2 hand you the whole kit: the research methods, the sources, the recording equipment including 3D scanning and LiDAR, the atlassing techniques, and the models you will reason with. Weeks 3 and 4 are the field fortnight, with no live class. Weeks 5 to 11 are one subject a week, most with a guest who works in it: emergy accounting, digital twins, sensing and the Internet of Things, geogames, unbuild. Week 12 is the seminar.

Open the full programme, week by week, with the guest series, the October field-trip fortnight and the AIARG 2026 conference weekend.

How you are assessed

Continuous assessment, 100 marks, as published in the module descriptor.

Students participate in seminars and produce seminar paper and technical dossier.

The dossier is built across the term. You choose a project in week 1 and every week adds a layer to it: the survey, the constructional reading, the energy account, the measurements, the simulation, the case for what should happen to it. The seminar paper is the argument that dossier lets you make. Week 12 is the seminar where you make it.

Ten projects, one each

The cohort is ten this year, so there are no groups. You take one project and carry it for twelve weeks. Eight of the ten continue a thread the 2025-26 cohort opened, and two are new ground: unbuild, and geogames for urban design and community engagement.

Each cohort commits its research into the AT6012 Living Commons, a shared record the next cohort reads, checks and builds on. Yours joins it under your own name, with a licence that lets the next reader use it. Part of your work is taking the inherited thread apart: naming the construct it was built on, its settings and its assumptions, saying what holds, and proposing the modification.

The ten projects sets out what each one inherits, the six obligations every project carries, and what gets deposited.

What the module runs on

Live instruments. You work on these, and your findings go back into them.

AECO2 BIM Canvas, actors, stocks and flows on the 4D canvas.
Emergy Explorer, Odum's ecological energy accounting.
Digital Twin and Sensing and Wellbeing and Occupancy, the model beside the instrument.
infrared.city for thermal analysis and environmental simulation, and simSPACE, a systems-dynamics urban-forest game.
Datum for the coordinate substrate, and Givoni for climate data and building physics.
Solving for Zero, the participatory action research course running alongside this one.
DevOps, how the platform itself is built, which is on the syllabus because a tool you cannot inspect is a tool you cannot criticise.

What you need to bring

An architecture or engineering bachelor's degree or a related equivalent qualification, with proficiency in English. Beyond that, an interest in becoming climate literate, in uncovering new architecture solutions, and in helping achieve net zero buildings with universal access.

Applying

Applications close on Wednesday 2 September 2026. The fee is EUR 500. A limited number of places carry an 80 per cent Higher Education Authority subsidy, which brings the fee to EUR 100 payable on registration. Jobseekers and returners are given priority for the funded places.

Apply for a funded place on Springboard+ The module page on ucc.ie

Questions go to maroun.tabbal@ucc.ie.

Taking more than one

AT6012 is one of three Level 9 micro-credentials CCAE offers this year. AT6020 Research Methods II: Digital Storytelling and Immersive Fictions starts on 26 October 2026, and AT6031 Reviving Buildings: Methods and Praxis for Adaptive Reuse and Resilient Retrofit starts on 25 November 2026. The three were timetabled to sit beside each other, and the Wednesday lunchtime hour is shared between them.

The full CCAE micro-credentials schedule shows how the three run together across the year.

Dates, fee, learning outcomes, module goal and assessment on this page are read from the UCC module descriptor at ucc.ie/en/at6012, updated 7 August 2026, and cross-checked against the CCAE delivery schedule. Page revised 24 August 2026. Cork Centre for Architectural Education, UCC and MTU. Part of the CCAE Building Change project. Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.