AEI 2026 ISDC Program and Addendum Coming Soon

NEW: Each University with a team enrolled in the competition is automatically invited to advance one team to the Finals to present their project to a panel of jurors at the AEI 2026 Conference in San Antonio, TX. Teams will indicate their INTENT to procced to the Finals by submitting their Final Team Roster by the requested deadline, and CONFIRM their commitment to participate as a Finalist by submitting the required Written Submission by the deadline outlined in the Addendum. Failure to meet either deadline will automatically disqualify the team from being a Finalist. Only one team per university can advance to the Finals.

The building shall be designed to integrate and optimize on a life cycle basis all major high-performance attributes, including energy conservation, environment, safety, building security, structural and material durability, accessibility, cost-benefit, productivity, sustainability, functionality and operational considerations.

As a part of their written submissions, teams are asked to address overall building system design issues and describe how the engineered systems work with and complement the other engineering disciplines and architecture.

It is not the intent of the competition to provide a prescriptive list of items to be submitted for each area. The submittal is intended to be similar to a design development submittal in content. Submittals should be developed to the level that communicates the design intent while demonstrating that the solutions have been thoughtfully developed to the point of at least proof of concept with supporting calculations, are innovative, of high quality, are realistic, and are functional within the scope outlined in the competition requirements.

Integration is defined as both the process of working together as a design/construction team and the physical result of integrated materials and systems in the building, including the use of advanced engineering techniques and tools for design coordination, interference and conflict checks and constructability. Therefore, the integration submittal should describe the team organization and process, address the interactions between the architecture, the engineered systems, and the construction, and provide rationale for the decisions made to arrive at the proposed design/construction solutions. The design team should evaluate the economic viability of major design/construction decisions in order to adhere to design intent and the construction budget.