Computational Design: NEXT 16

Ismail Seleit is a distinguished architect at Foster + Partners, renowned for his expertise in computational design and BIM (Building Information Modeling). His work encompasses various projects, from design competitions to complex building realizations. Ismail is dedicated to integrating advanced AI tools, such as Stable Diffusion and ControlNet, into architectural workflows, pushing the boundaries of design innovation. Beyond architecture, he is an accomplished ambient-electronic music producer, creating soundtracks for architectural films and various independent projects, showcasing his multifaceted creativity and technical skills.

Nefeli Chatzimina is an Architect, Engineer, Designer, and Founder of architectScripta, an interdisciplinary architectural platform initiated in New York and based in Athens, Greece, specializing in experimental design and emerging technologies. Nefeli has worked as an Architect for her professor, Bernard Tschumi, in New York and holds a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University NYC. She has taught Design Studio independently as a Lecturer at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She has lectured at universities in the US and India, as well as highly prestigious venues and museums in Athens, Greece. She is currently a PhD Candidate at the National Technical University of Athens, from which she graduated. ArchitectScripta-built projects have been nominated for international awards, exhibited in galleries and Museums, and published in international magazines. Nefeli has conducted International Advanced Design Workshops at the Benaki Museum in Athens, and her work has been published and exhibited in galleries, institutions, and museums in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Athens. ArchitectScripta built projects focusing on experimental advanced design techniques and emergent digital manufacturing and fabrication technologies. Their projects have been nominated twice for the Mies van der Rohe Award, By ArchDaily for the Building of the Year Housing category 2023, and have won the BIG SEE Interior Design Award 2019. Residential and office projects have been featured as a Cover in Architectural Magazines and the Press. ArchitectScripta projects are available at OpenSea, the world’s first and largest web3 marketplace for NFTs today. The next major project of architectScripta, in exclusive collaboration with Nexus Properties, is in the Elliniko area, an innovative luxury residential complex of 3,000m2 for sale at the Athenian Riviera as part of the ‘FLY’ series buildings.

Kerenza Harris is the Director of Advanced Technology and Associate Principal at Morphosis. She oversees advanced computational design and simulation for all projects. Her team focuses on the research, development, documentation, and integration of real-time technologies from early concept phases through construction. She also leads the design, optimization, and construction of exterior envelopes, focusing on complex systems and geometry. She developed the terracotta façade for the Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa, CA, and the main GFRP façade of the Kolon One & Only Tower in Seoul, South Korea. Kerenza is also a faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where her teaching focuses on digital design tools and integrated project delivery. She is a frequent speaker on design computation and its impact on the making of architecture.

Alex Hill is a dynamic force in the world of footwear innovation and design. Armed with a fervent curiosity and a deep-seated passion for creating unique and functional footwear, Alex has carved out a niche for himself as a visionary in the industry, with a curiosity in exploring the intersections between design, engineering, and biomechanics that helps to solve complex problems to create future sport performance solutions. The integration of digital tools into the footwear design process provides 3-dimensional explorations to fully visualize iteration, faster rapid prototyping, and concept validation. Alex is currently contributing on the 3D and Advanced Concepts footwear design team at lululemon spanning performance and lifestyle categories. Previously he was an innovation designer at Brooks Running, collaborating on elite athlete, cushion, trail, and innovation in-line footwear products. Alex is always searching to learn new design tools to implement them into effective workflows to help push the creative boundaries.

Alex Wertheim is an R&D Process Engineer & Technologist specializing in materials, micro, and nanofabrication. With a broad skill set and a focus on innovative problem-solving, Alex excels in roles that foster collaboration and creativity. Their experience spans from thin-film synthesis systems to full device process flow engineering, showcasing a deep understanding of process development across scales. With a self-taught, entrepreneurial mindset, Alex thrives on building new aptitudes and seeing things differently, driving progress in engineering and technology.

Laura Civetti is a Fashion tech designer who has made significant contributions to the fashion industry. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design from IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in Milan, where she conducted thesis research on Eco-Yacht design. In 2018, Laura attended the Fabricademy Barcelona from FAB LAB and in 2023, she completed her Master’s in Science in Computational and Advanced design at DesignMorphine. Laura’s professional journey started as an intern at the Iris Van Herpen Atelier in Amsterdam, after which she worked at Noumena Group. During her years at Noumena, she was the head fashion tech designer, working on design research projects aimed at material development and additive manufacturing for the body. She also coordinated the Reshape design platform, a design contest, and an event that seeks emerging designers for future industries. In 2020, Laura joined Materfad-Centre of Materials Barcelona as a Project manager to support companies in the research and development of new materials. Laura is a Senior designer at Nagami, fostering the link between computational design and additive manufacturing. Her expertise lies in material development and additive manufacturing for the body and she is a content author for material innovation in educational programs at School of Wrad. She also coordinated the Reshape design platform, a design contest, and an event that seeks emerging designers for future industries. In 2020, Laura joined Materfad-Centre of Materials Barcelona as a Project manager to support companies in the research and development of new materials.

Carmelo Zappulla, Italian-born architect (1978), is founder and managing director of the Barcelona-based architecture studio External Reference, which develops international work at different scales: exhibition spaces, hospitality, retail, architecture, urban, interior and product design. Graduated with honours and special mention from the University of Palermo, and with a PhD (European Mention) with honours from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Zappulla, always interested in research linked to new technologies and materials, has in recent years adopted for his studio a “cradle to cradle” approach, where architecture is composed of elements compatible with a circular economy and which allow for their complete reuse. At the helm of External Reference, the architect has developed his interest in innovation applied to design using the latest computational and parametric tools. His research into geometric patterns and complex morphologies has allowed him to explore new formal repertoires and constructive solutions in the world of digital fabrication that have been applied in the academy and in the numerous innovative projects carried out in more than 15 years of the studio’s activity.At the helm of External Reference, the architect has developed his interest in innovation applied to design using the latest computational and parametric tools. His research into geometric patterns and complex morphologies has allowed him to explore new formal repertoires and constructive solutions in the world of digital fabrication that have been applied in the academy and in the numerous innovative projects carried out in more than 15 years of the studio’s activity.

David Mans is a highly versatile professional with extensive design, development, and education expertise. He is passionate about creating and publishing tools and workflows that enable multidisciplinary designers to explore new ways of creating and inspiring the next generation to embrace and drive technological change. Currently, he serves as the Vice President of Applications Development at Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio, where he leads the development of ellipse Studio, an AEC data presentation platform, and a lightweight digital twin. In addition to his developer role on multiple web applications, he is the creator of the CORE studio Adobe Illustrator Toolkit and a supporting developer of TT Toolbox. He also holds the position of Director of CORE studio’s AECtech conference, which brings together innovators in the Design, AEC, and Software space for an annual series of global symposiums, workshops, and hackathons. David transitioned from a successful architectural design career to a software developer. He held prestigious positions such as Senior Computational Designer at Grimshaw Architects NYC and Lead Designer for the Terra canopy at the 2020 Dubai Expo. Earlier, during his time at Woods Bagot’s Global Studio, he contributed to over 50 projects in 11 countries, including significant work on the facade design for the SAHMRI project in Adelaide, Australia.

Tim Aufdemkamp is an architect specializing in designing, planning, and realizing 3D-printed buildings. His expertise has been honed through collaborations with industry stalwarts like PERI 3D Constructions and Roeser GmbH. Proprietary Grasshopper scripts, developed under his direction, serve to optimize the design and execution processes. Aufdemkamp is pioneering a BIM-oriented planning approach tailored for the 3D printing domain. With a master’s thesis and early career focused on integrating AR/VR with 3D printing tools such as Rhino and Grasshopper, he possesses a comprehensive understanding that allows him to address multifaceted challenges in the construction realm.

Mateusz Zwierzycki is the founder of Object, a company providing services and products based on parametric modeling, design workflow management, digital fabrication, and machine learning. Additionally, he was a Research Assistant at BTU (Cottbus), where he was involved in machine learning and robotics control research. Previously, he worked at CITA (Copenhagen) on such projects as Complex Modelling and DuraArk. His interests focus on machine learning, architectural geometry, and generative algorithms. Mateusz tutored many international (Poland, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Germany, Denmark, USA, UAE) programming workshops and courses. He is the author of the Starling, Anemone, Volvox, Squid, and Owl plugins for Grasshopper and many more scripts scattered all over the Grasshopper community. He collaborated on various projects with companies such as Zieta Prozessdesign and Joris Laarman Lab, where he applied his digital modeling, programming, and simulation skills.

Jesper Wallgren is a co-founder and the Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Finch, where he is responsible for product development and the algorithms utilized in the Finch platform. His short videos showcase new ways to generate architecture. Before co-founding Finch, Jesper worked as an architect and computational designer, developing algorithms in Grasshopper to increase workflow efficiency at the architecture firm he founded with Pamela Nunez Wallgren. He began posting short videos of these algorithms on social media during this period. The videos caught the AEC industry’s attention, which became Finch’s start. Jesper is also the creator of graph technology, which enables the generative techniques to be used in multiple features within the Finch platform.

Mahdiyar Esmail beigi born in 1989, holds a master’s degree in architecture and is currently a PhD student in this field. With over 12 years of experience using Rhino and Grasshopper, he has developed a deep expertise in these software tools. In 2015, he released his first plugin, Grasshopper Launcher. Since then, he has developed and published several plugins for Rhino and Grasshopper, which might be of interest: Javid, Kampecaris for GH2, Euglena, Planthopper, PersianCat, Seal and IAC.He has been an active lecturer and developer, contributing significantly to architecture and computational design.

Michael Pryor is a multi-faceted designer utilizing Rhino + Grasshopper, C#, Maya, ZBrush, Houdini and others. He is currently a Head of Procedural Generation at Wilder World Metaverse and the CDO of DesignMorphine. Previously he was a Computational Designer at Nike NXT on performance footwear. He has been involved in various major architectural works in the US, China, Dubai, and Lebanon. Previously, he worked at Trahan, SOMA, OLI, and [AY]A on projects ranging from museums, housing, restaurants, furniture, products, exhibits and prototypes. Michael is the author of the popular Grasshopper3d plug-in Pufferfish with over 150k downloads. He has been the tutor to workshops by the AA visiting school Paris with Louis Vuitton, 3D-Dreaming, Rese.Arch, MIT OSL, Harvard GSD, rat[LAB], PA, Meal, and DesignMorphine.

Hamid Hassanzadeh is a distinguished architect, entrepreneur, researcher, and speaker. Having earned his degree in architectural engineering in 2012, Hamid has since contributed to various architectural projects across multiple regions around the globe.

In early 2016, he founded the ParametricArchitecture platform, initially launching on Instagram. Today, ParametricArchitecture, often abbreviated as PA, stands as a globally renowned hub for parametric, computational design, and AI lovers, boasting over 20 million monthly interactions on the internet. Hamid endeavors to demystify the intricacies of the parametric, computational, and AI realms through compelling articles, interviews, workshops, podcasts, and conferences disseminated across various digital platforms.

Furthermore, he’s the visionary behind PAACADEMY, an educational entity under the aegis of PA, dedicated to propagating the concepts of computational architecture and design. The PAACADEMY, as an educational platform, educates and engages with its audience, introducing them to advanced techniques and algorithms employed by architects, designers, and coders alike. He highlights exemplary projects executed using state-of-the-art design software, ensuring that his audience not only witnesses but also comprehends the depth and philosophy of these avant-garde design practices.

Moreover, as the esteemed host of the 'PA Talks' interview series, he engages in enriching conversations with architects, orchestrates numerous workshops, conferences, and events, and has had the privilege of interviewing myriad globally acclaimed architects, delving into their methodologies and foresighted visions for the architectural landscape.