Interdisciplinary Design: Influence of Team Structure on Project Success

Abstract

The conceptual building design phase is crucial in the overall design process, determining the life-cycle quality of a building. Early collaboration of architects and engineers should provide for creation of new knowledge and solutions beyond specific scope of disciplines. This paper presents the research on collaboration of students of architecture and structural engineering in conceptual design phase, within interdisciplinary design class, at the same time the student competition Concrete Student Trophy at the Vienna University of Technology.

The research focus is to find out the impact of the team composition on the design quality in terms of competition success. The first findings generated through the logistic regression indicate that more architects are beneficial to the probability of success, while more civil engineers in the team are harmful to the probability of success of a student group in the Concrete Student Trophy. The future research will explore the impact of further drivers such as professional experience or former acquaintance of team members on the success.