From Digital to Physical: Josh Dortzbach at Chicago Innovate 2026
This week, architects, engineers, designers, technologists, and builders will come together for Chicago Innovate 2026, a four day event exploring how new technologies, materials, and ways of working are reshaping the AEC industry.
Forefront Founding Partner Josh Dortzbach will join the symposium on September 25 as a panelist for the Advanced Materials + Construction discussion. His presentation, From Digital to Physical: Engineering a New Way to Build, explores an idea that has increasingly shaped the way we work at Forefront: the future of construction is not simply about developing new materials or adopting more technology. It is about reducing the distance between an idea and the way that idea is ultimately fabricated and built.
Josh’s presentation begins with his own path through very different construction environments and the lessons those experiences provided. Innovation does not always mean adding complexity. Sometimes constraints force clearer thinking and a better understanding of how to build intelligently with the materials, resources, and people available.
From there, the conversation moves into the digital workflows that have become part of Forefront’s design process. Tools including Rhino, Grasshopper, Python, automation, and optimization allow us to explore more possibilities and connect geometry, structural analysis, documentation, and fabrication. The goal is not simply to automate work that engineers already do. It is to use computation to investigate more solutions and make better decisions earlier in the process.
But digital design is only part of the equation.
Josh will also discuss Forefront’s increasing interest in physical making, from 3D printing and CNC fabrication to full scale prototypes. There are things we learn by actually building something that are difficult to see on a computer screen. Connections behave differently at full scale. Tolerances become real. Assembly sequences matter. Building, testing, modifying, and building again allows those lessons to feed directly back into the engineering process.
That connection between digital and physical thinking is also helping create entirely new structural systems. Forefront has been exploring hybrid approaches that use materials such as mass timber, cold formed steel, concrete, and structural steel based on what each material does best. Rather than advocating for a particular material, the objective is to develop repeatable structural systems that can improve speed, cost, constructability, and performance.
Ultimately, Josh’s presentation makes the case for moving the structural engineer earlier into the design process. Structure, architecture, fabrication, manufacturing, logistics, cost, and erection are often treated as separate conversations. Bringing those conversations together earlier gives engineers an opportunity to help shape not only the structure, but how the building itself is conceived and delivered.
It is a shift from simply engineering the building we are given to helping invent a better way to build it.
Bringing Chicago Innovate to 25 E Washington
There is another connection to this year’s Chicago Innovate that makes the event particularly meaningful for our team.
The workshop portion of the program on September 24 will take place at the Atrium Club at 25 E Washington, in the same building as Forefront’s Chicago office. The Atrium Club is also a project we had the opportunity to help create.
The space was once an underused lightwell and mechanical area within the historic building. Working with geniant, EastLake Studio, and Redmond Construction, Forefront helped transform it into an indoor and outdoor tenant amenity with spaces for meetings, coworking, dining, and gathering.
Hosting a day focused on emerging AEC technology, computational design, and new ways of working in a space that our team helped bring to life feels especially fitting. It also means that, in a way, part of Chicago Innovate is happening right downstairs from us.
We are excited to welcome members of Chicago’s design and technology community to the building and to have Josh contribute to the broader conversation about where our industry is headed.
For us, that future is not about digital tools replacing the physical act of building. It is about connecting the two more closely and giving architects, engineers, fabricators, and contractors better ways to learn from one another.
That is where some of the most interesting opportunities in our industry are beginning to emerge.
