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Jason Van Nest

Advancing the shift from representational design to configuration- and simulation-driven delivery. Founder of both Logic Building Systems and the Center for Offsite Construction... together addressing the technical, legal, and educational blockages preventing offsite construction from scaling to meet the housing crisis.


Architect
Educator
Technologist
Artist


Teaching Statement
Research Statement


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December 17, 2025


Teaching Statement



I teach architecture as a systems discipline, not a representation of complex urban forms.

My courses prepare students to work within industrialized, interdisciplinary realities. In studios, seminars, and technical classes, students test assumptions, trace consequences, and practice judgment by working with precedent, production methods, data, and collaborators.

I have taught across tracks (design studio, building technology, representation, and professional practice) to understand architecture education as a whole. My tenure as New York Tech’s Academic Senate president has helped generalize those lessons across other disciplines. All of those experiences shape my teaching today. I focus on helping students connect design intent to how buildings are made, moved, regulated, and performed. I use simulation to reveal cause and effect, not to teach tools.

My courses emphasize systems integration as design intelligence. In seminars on offsite and industrialized construction, students study real delivery models and evaluate them for affordability, resilience, and sustainability. In studio, students integrate structure, enclosure, services, and production limits into coherent proposals grounded in real-life constraints.

I am eager to continue to develop unique and relevant courses, that could fit into may curricula. They include the following:

  • Seminars, such as, Survey of Offsite Construction Technologies, Methods, and Economics, where students critically examine contemporary offsite and industrialized construction systems through the lenses of sustainability, affordability, and resilience.

  • Studios, such as, Systems Integration with Offsite Methods, where students work collaboratively to integrate structure, enclosure, services, and production constraints into coherent design proposals.

These new courses would foreground making and systems integration as forms of design intelligence, aligning closely with many institute’s emphasis on practice-based, interdisciplinary inquiry.

In all settings, my teaching aims to help students develop clear frameworks, high standards, and resilience in a changing building environment. I do not give them answers. Students should fail early, revise often, and learn how to recover. Assessment should reward rigor, reflection, and progress rather than polish.

I work best at universities who’s experiential and interdisciplinary culture aligns closely with this approach. I am especially interested in teaching across architecture and engineering, where shared projects make material, manufacturing, and performance visible.

My goal is not only to prepare students for evolving professional practice, but to equip them to reshape it.