Following last week’s look at an opening for a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Architectural Design at the University of Hong Kong, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open position on Archinect Jobs for a VDC Coordinator at Assembly OSM.
The successful candidate will join a team of approximately 30 people in the venture-backed company, who grew out of SHoP Architects with the goal of creating high-rise urban buildings with greater speed, quality, affordability, and environmental credentials that the wider market. The role, based in New York, calls for an individual skilled in 3D modeling to “construct and maintain fabrication-level Revit models for use throughout each product’s lifecycle, from design to fabrication and assembly and eventual operation.”
Why the role interests us
The role at Assembly OSM offers us the opportunity to explore how one startup in the AEC space is seeking to carve a new path toward the design and delivery of high-rise urban buildings; a challenge explored in-depth in our 2021 feature on modular architecture.
For Assembly OSM, which has raised almost $40 million in Series A funding since launched by two SHoP principals in 2019, buildings should be imagined as high-end products rather than one-off projects, dependent on a parameterized structural system that can expand or contract in response to contextual needs and conditions. In pursuit of this approach, the company works with individuals previously of Tesla, SpaceX, and Boeing, as well as individuals from AEC companies such as SHoP, Arup, and Cimolai.
“Assembly buildings are designed (by Assembly), manufactured (by our supply chain), assembled (by Assembly), and stacked (by our general contractor partners),” the company explains. “Our process represents a generational advance in the delivery of buildings — this is not “modular” as the term is currently used in industry.”
The company is one of several with disruptive ambitions to recently feature in our editorial. Late last year, we covered the rise of a startup founded by a co-founder of Airbnb with a goal of factory-producing studio and one-bedroom units, as well as news that WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann was preparing to launch his own startup in the housing space.
Recent material-focused startups from our editorial include an ‘inflatable’ concrete home manufacturer in New York, as well as an AI concrete startup that has raised $4 million in seed funding. Meanwhile, startups recently launched to aid architects in the design process include a Swiss tech company that uses enhanced aerial photography to create advanced 3D models of cities for designers and a company that can project life-size plans for client walkthroughs.
Further reading for interested candidates
Job Highlights is one of a number of ongoing weekly series showcasing the opportunities available on our industry-leading job board. Our Meet Your Next Employer profiles and interviews interesting studios with open positions currently available on Archinect Jobs, while our weekly roundups curate job opportunities by location, career level, and job description.
6 Comments
Venture backed startup aiming to disrupt? No, thanks.
$85K is pretty low compared to what comparable positions at subcontractors are paying.
Or just regular licensed architect positions ...
but but...it's backed by sHoPp.
Keep on disruptin. Isn't that what Katerra was pitching? How did that work out?
Can’t disrupt with design when the supply chain continues to be comprised of the same products. Like it or not if one wants to build at a profit you take the cheapest off the shelf materials available. It’s why everything looks the same these days. Nevermind the increasingly formulaic codes.
Remember when wework and dozens of others tried, and failed? This too will fail for the same reasons. Architects have very little power to enact change in the very large and complex industry that is construction.
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