Designing a Brighter Future

Paavan Joshi’s Iowa State experience propels career in digital design and fabrication.

Written by Lauren Johnson

You might say Paavan Joshi was destined to be a designer.

Growing up in a multigenerational household in Chandigarh, India — a city highly regarded for its urban planning and architecture — Joshi was surrounded by inspiration. His mother encouraged him to draw, and his father, an interior designer and architect, brought him along on site visits.

“That experience gave me a really clear understanding of what it meant to be an architect and a designer,” Joshi said. “I knew I wanted to make a positive impact in society.”

Telling a story through design

Joshi was just 17 when he enrolled at Iowa State University as a pre-architecture major in 2013.

He embraced opportunities for involvement, including serving as a Destination Iowa State team leader, an international student ambassador, an undergraduate research assistant and a member of DATUM, Student Journal of Architecture.

In spring 2017, Joshi studied in Italy with the College of Design’s Rome Program, where “the most valuable lesson I learned was understanding how to tell a story through design and architecture for an audience that may not speak the same language as I do,” he said.

Demanding and creative

After graduating with his bachelor of architecture in 2018, Joshi joined Corgan in Dallas as an architectural intern. While at the firm, Corgan and Studio Gang won an international competition to design the first global alliance terminal in the United States at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The addition would integrate domestic and international terminal operations and enhance passenger and baggage connectivity.

The O’Hare Global Terminal has a contemporary design with high ceilings, exposed beams, plants and trees, and spaces for pop-up events and informal gatherings. Construction is scheduled to start in 2026.

“I was the youngest member of the team, working alongside about 50 other people,” Joshi said. “It was very demanding but also so creative.”

A site visit to the airport would ultimately lead Joshi back to Iowa State.

“We were looking at phasing construction of the three main columns supporting the terminal’s oculus and I wondered if we could digitally fabricate them on site, but I didn’t know how,” he said. “That pushed me to come back to school to learn digital fabrication.”

Blending heritage with technology

Returning to campus in 2021, Joshi connected with architecture associate professor Shelby Doyle, cofounder of the ISU Computation and Construction Lab (CCL) and Stan G. Thurston Professor in Design Build, and art and visual culture professor Ingrid Lilligren, who — together with associate professor Cameron Campbell (BArch 1997 / MArch 2003) — helped him bring his graduate research project to life.

Joshi realized he could blend his Indian heritage with modern technology to apply digital design and fabrication methods to vernacular architecture, specifically, by 3D-printing a jaali — a perforated façade or screen that cools the air that flows through it — using clay.

Through a partnership between the Department of Art and Visual Culture and the CCL, Lilligren helped Joshi and students enrolled in Doyle’s “Digital Clay” course learn about the properties of clay and glaze. After successfully producing a 3D-printed ceramic jaali, Joshi tested the screen’s performance in Iowa State’s Aerodynamic/ Atmospheric Boundary Layer Tunnel.

“I was able to get four-and-a-half degrees of temperature change (from one side of the jaali to the other) in a wind tunnel, which is a lot,” Joshi said. He has since used the computational knowledge he gained through this project to design parametric façades for one of the world’s leading tech companies.

Fulfilling career path

Joshi also discovered a love of teaching as an instructor for the Architecture 201 studio. When he received his master of science from ISU in 2022, Joshi continued teaching in another capacity while working as a technical designer at Gensler’s Chicago office, where he facilitated a two-year paid apprenticeship program for high school students.

Now a design professional with HKS, Inc., in Chicago, Joshi is designing high-performance computing data centers with a focus on reducing their carbon footprint. He hopes to one day return to India to design affordable, climate-resilient housing or to his alma mater as a faculty member.

Wherever his future path takes him, he’s grateful for the one that led him to Iowa State.

“Iowa State has made me who I am today,” said Joshi. “My experience on campus was truly unforgettable, and the wonderful community I became a part of played a crucial role in where I am now in my career.