This year’s edition, “Design in Nature: The Evolution of Designs”, marked the 30th anniversary of the Constructal Law. CLC2026 brought together 69 presenters and over 90 auditors from 17 countries. It was also a conference of firsts: the first CLC held in Paris, and the first held in a school of architecture, hosted by the Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture, PSL University, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Monday’s program took place at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Founded in 1913 by Jacques Copeau and today one of the stages of the Comédie-Française, it gave the opening day an atmosphere no lecture hall could match. Tuesday’s sessions moved to the Callot building, one of the few university buildings in central Paris, and the home ground of Paris-Malaquais.
This year's welcome speeches also brought the society's publishing side to the stage. Telli Faez, Senior Publisher, Mechanical Engineering, Thermal & Fluids, Elsevier, and William Worek, Editor-in-Chief of International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer, addressed participants at the opening, reminding everyone that the conference and the journal have grown together.
The keynote of the anniversary edition was delivered by Adrian Bejan, under the title “Diversity and Freedom in Nature and Society”, thirty years after the first publication of the law that gives the conference its name.
The Constructal Law Conference Award, first presented in 2024 and now in its third year, went to Stephen Perin, “for originality, independence, and surprising connections between air traffic systems, business, the Pyramids, and computation.” Congratulations, Stephen!
The anniversary year brought one more honor for the constructal society. Adrian Bejan has been awarded the 2026 Prigogine Medal. The University of Siena and the Wessex Institute established the medal in 2004 to honor the memory of Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry, and it is awarded each year to a leading scientist working in the spirit of his ideas on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the emergence of order. Thirty years after the Constructal Law was first published, the medal places its author in that line.
Great thanks to Lazaros Mavromatidis, Conference Chair, for steering a conference whose program had to be rebuilt days before it opened; to Christelle Lecoeur, Conference Administrator, who carried that building through in practice; to Jean-Baptiste de Froment, Director of Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture - PSL University, for supporting and hosting the constructal society; and to every speaker and participant who traveled to Paris and adapted to the new schedule.
The road ahead is already set. The 17th Constructal Law Conference (CLC2027) will be held on 22-24 September 2027 at Imperial College London, UK, and the 18th (CLC2028) will be hosted by Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Türkiye. We look forward to seeing the constructal society in both cities.
The conference page remains online at constructallaw.com/p/clc2026, and everything about the Constructal Society, past conferences, publications, and upcoming events can be found at constructallaw.com.
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