CONFERENCE CHAIRS & EDITORS

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Jane Burry

Conference co-Chair

Jane Burry

Jane Burry is an architect, professor and Dean of the School of Design at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
She is lead author of The New Mathematics of Architecture, T&H, 2010, editor of Designing the Dynamic, Melbourne Books, 2013 and co-author of Prototyping for Architects, T&H 2016 and has over a hundred other publications. Jane has practiced and taught internationally, including involvement as a project architect in the technical office at Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Basilica with partner Mark Burry. She is co-curator of the 2018 International Exhibition Dynamics of Air.
Recent funded research explores the opportunities for leveraging digital fabrication with simulation and feedback to create better, more sensitive, human-centric spaces. Manipulating geometry and materiality within the design, architecture can fine tune the acoustic, thermal and air flow aesthetics for higher quality environments. Other partnered research investigates rich environmental data gathering and its application to designing better urban environments.

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Jenny Sabin

Conference co-Chair

Jenny Sabin

Jenny E. Sabin is an architectural designer whose work is at the forefront of a new direction for 21st century architectural practice — one that investigates the intersections of architecture and science and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures. Sabin is the Wiesenberger Associate Professor in the area of design and emerging technologies at Cornell University. She is principal of Jenny Sabin Studio, an experimental architectural design studio based in Ithaca and Director of the Sabin Design Lab at Cornell AAP. Sabin holds degrees in ceramics and interdisciplinary visual art from the University of Washington and a master of architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts 2010 and was named a USA Knight Fellow in Architecture. In 2014, she was awarded the prestigious Architectural League Prize. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the FRAC Centre, Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, and most recently as part of Imprimer Le Monde at the Pompidou. Her book LabStudio: Design Research Between Architecture and Biologyco-authored with Peter Lloyd Jones was published in 2017. This year, Sabin won MoMA & MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program with her submission, Lumen.

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Bob Sheil

FABRICATE co-Founder

Bob Sheil

Bob Sheil is an Architect, Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture, Professor in Architecture and Design through Production, and the School’s Director of Technology. He is a founding partner of sixteen*(makers), whose work in collaboration with Stahlbogen GmbH ‘55/02’ won a RIBA award for design in 2010, and also includes a ten year catalogue of experimental projects both internationally published and exhibited. He is an educator, critic, researcher, collaborator and practitioner, as well as an experimental designer who is fascinated by transgression between making, craft, and technology, in architectural design practice. He has played a leading role in the School’s significant acceleration of investment in digital technologies since he took over as Director of Technology in 2007, including founding the Digital Manufacturing Centre (2009) and later evolving it into the Bartlett Manufacturing and Design Exchange (B-MADE), which merges all workshop and laboratory resources of the School under one organization.

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Marilena Skavara

FABRICATE co-Founder and co-editor

Marilena Skavara

Marilena Skavara is a London based architect and interaction designer. She is a co-founder and partner at Codica Ltd., a London-based digital product design practice focused on outcome-driven innovation. She has led and contributed to transformational projects for Mercedes Benz, UCL, M&S, HM Government and several leading startups in fintech, automotive, AI, health, femtech and media. She has also been involved in social impact projects for non-profits in the US, UK and EU.
Marilena is one of the founding members and editors of FABRICATE — a triennial international peer-reviewed conference and publication, which explores the progressive integration of digital design with manufacturing processes, and its impact on design and making in the 21st century. She holds a MSc (Hons) degree in Architecture from the National Technical University in Athens and a MSc (Hons) Adaptive Architecture & Computation (AAC) at the Bartlett, UCL. Her MSc graduate project ‘Adaptive fa[ca]de’ was extensively exhibited, published and presented at conferences and publications.

Keynotes

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Philippe Block

Keynote

Philippe Block

Philippe Block is Professor at the Institute of Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich, where he co-directs the Block Research Group (BRG) together with Dr. Tom Van Mele. He is also the director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Digital Fabrication, and founding partner of Ochsendorf DeJong & Block (ODB Engineering). Block studied architecture and structural engineering at the VUB, Belgium, and at MIT, USA, where he earned his PhD in 2009. Research at the BRG focuses on computational form finding, optimisation and construction of curved surface structures, specialising in unreinforced masonry vaults and concrete shells. Within the NCCR, BRG researchers develop innovative structurally informed bespoke prefabrication strategies and novel construction paradigms employing digital fabrication. With the BRG and ODB Engineering, Block applies his research into practice on the structural assessment of historic monuments in unreinforced masonry and the design and engineering of novel shell structures.

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Meejin Yoon

Keynote

Meejin Yoon

Meejin Yoon (b. Seoul, Korea) is an architect, designer, artist, educator, and co-founding principal of Höweler + Yoon. She is currently the Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning. Previously, she was Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT where she began teaching in 2001. Her design work and research investigate the intersections between architecture, technology, and public space. She is the author of Absence and co-author of Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig.

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Cristiano Ceccato

Keynote

Cristiano Ceccato

Cristiano Ceccato is Associate Director at Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) in London, having previously worked for Frank O. Gehry Partners in Los Angeles. Trained as an architect and computer scientist, he engages across all levels of design and technical development, with worldwide project delivery experience on a wide range of typologies. Cristiano is also an accomplished software developer, having co-founded the BIM company Gehry Technologies in California. Cristiano has spearheaded ZHA’s entrance into the aviation market since 2010. He is the Project Director for the Beijing Daxing Airport terminal building, a new 72mppa facility in China; and the Navi Mumbai International Airport, a new 70mppa complex in India. Cristiano is a graduate of both the Architectural Association and Imperial College in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and sits on the Air Transport Group board of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

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Julia Barfield

Keynote

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Julia Barfield (MBE RIBA FRSA) founded Marks Barfield Architects in 1989 with husband and partner David Marks (1952 – 2017); known as both the designers and the creative entrepreneurs behind the London Eye and the British Airways i360 in Brighton.

 Marks Barfield Architects is a multi-award winning practice with a portfolio of work across many sectors; from culture and education, bridges and transport, sports and leisure, to workplace and mixed use developments. The most recently completed project is the Cambridge Central Mosque in Cambridge which opened in April 2019.
Julia chaired this year’s Stirling judging panel, was on the National RIBA awards panel until 2018, sits on several quality and award judging panels and examines at the University of Bath. Julia lectures on sustainability in architecture and is on the steering group of Architect’s declare.

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Kai Strehlke

Keynote

Kai Strehlke joined in 2015 the Blumer Lehmann AG, where he is working on the interface between digital data and CNC manufacturing of large scale timber structures. Parallel he teaches Design and Digital Processes since 2016 at the Department of Architecture at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Between 2005 and 2015 he has built up and led the Department of Digital Technologies at the architectural office Herzog & de Meuron in Basel. From 1997 to 2004 he researched and lectured at the chair of CAAD at the Swiss Federal School of Technology in Zurich and submitted his PhD with the theme of “The Digital Ornament in Architecture, its Generation, Production and Application with Computer-Controlled Technologies.

Session Chairs

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Kathy Velikov

Session Chair

Kathy Velikov

Kathy Velikov is an Architect, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and President of ACADIA. She is founding partner of the research-based practice rvtr, which serves as a platform for exploration and experimentation in the intertwinements between architecture, the environment, technology, and sociopolitics. Her work ranges from material prototypes that explore new possibilities for architectural skins that mediate matter, energy, information, space, and atmosphere between bodies and environments, to the investigation of urban infrastructures and territorial practices, working through the techniques of mapping and analysis, speculative design propositions, installations, and writing. Kathy is a recipient of the Architectural League’s Young Architects Award, the Canadian Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture, and co-author of the book Infra Eco Logi Urbanism (2015). Her work and writing has been published in TAD, AD, Footprint, JAE, IJAC, Leonardo, New Geographies, eVolo, Volume, [bracket] Goes Soft, and MONU, as well as in the books Towards a Robotic Architecture, Third Coast Atlas, Infrastructure Space, Hypernatural, Paradigms in Computing, Performative Materials in Architecture, and High Performance Homes. She is co-curator of the traveling exhibition “Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural” and co-editor of an upcoming book on the topic.

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Gilles Retsin

Session Chair

Gilles Retsin

Originally from Bruges, Belgium, Gilles Retsin is an architect and designer living in London. He studied architecture in Belgium, Chile and the UK, where he graduated from the Architectural Association. His design work and critical discourse has been internationally recognised through awards, lectures and exhibitions at major cultural institutions such as the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Royal Academy and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Gilles Retsin won 1st place in the competition for the main installation of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. He has also qualified with his proposals for the Budapest New National Gallery and a concert hall in Nuremberg. He recently edited an issue of Architectural Design (AD) on the Discrete and has co-edited Robotic Building: Architecture in the Age of Automation, with Detail Verlag. Gilles Retsin is Programme Director of the MArch Architectural Design at UCL, the Bartlett School of Architecture. He is also co-founder of the UCL Design Computation Lab, which does high-profile research into new design and fabrication technologies. Before founding Gilles Retsin Architecture, Gilles worked as a project architect with Christian Kerez in Zurich.

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Areti Markopoulou

Session Chair

Areti Markopoulou

Areti Markopoulou is a Greek architect, researcher and urban technologist working at the intersection between architecture and digital technologies. She is the Academic Director at IAAC in Barcelona, where she also leads the Advanced Architecture Group, a multidisciplinary research group exploring how design and science can positively impact and transform the present and future of our built spaces, the way we live and interact. Her research and practice seek to redefine architecture as a performative “body” beyond traditional notions of static materiality, approximate data, or standardized manufacturing.
Areti is co-founder of StudioP52 and co-editor of Urban Next, a global network focused on rethinking architecture through the contemporary urban milieu. She is the project coordinator of a number of European Research funded Projects on topics including urban regeneration though technologies, circular design and construction and multidisciplinary educational models in the digital age. Areti has also served as a curator of international exhibitions such as Future Arena and On Site Robotics (Building Barcelona Construmat 2019 and 2017), Print Matter (In3dustry 2016), HyperCity (Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale, 2015) and MyVeryOwnCity (World Bank, BR Barcelona, 2011), and her work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide.

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Wes McGee

Session Chair

Wes McGee

Wes McGee is an Associate Professor in Architecture and the Director of the Fabrication and Robotics Lab at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and Co-Founder of Matter Design. McGee’s research revolves around the interrogation of the means and methods of material production in architecture, focusing on developing new connections between design, engineering, materials, and manufacturing processes as they relate to the built environment. At Matter Design he explores these techniques across a range of scales and materials, with the goal of creating novel design and fabrication workflows.
McGee has been recognized with awards such as the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects & Designers and the ACADIA Award for Innovative Research, as well as multiple Architect Magazine R+D awards. Matter Design was recently a finalist in the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. His work has been published widely in books, periodicals, and peer-reviewed journals and he has collaborated with an extensive range of architects, engineers, and artists.

We would like to thank all the peer reviewers for their invaluable contribution to the peer reviewing process.
Sean Ahlquist, Francis Aish, Phil Ayres, Ehsan Baharlou, Martin Bechthold, Mirco Becker, Philip Beesley, Jane Burry, Nick Callicott, Canhui Chen, Brandon Clifford, Dana Cupkova, Moritz Doerstelmann, Evan Douglis, Stylianos Dritsas, Nick Dunn, Stephen Gage, David Gerber, Volker Helm, Axel Kilian, Nathan King, Toni Kotnik, Oliver Krieg, Julian Lienhard, Areti Markopoulou, Wes McGee, Achim Menges, Philippe Morel, Caitlin Mueller, Catie Newell, Paul Nicholas, Brady Peters, Marshall Prado, Dagmar Reinhardt, Gilles Retsin, Matthias Rippmann, Christopher Robeller, Stanislav Roudavski, Jenny Sabin, Virginia San Fratello, Simon Schleicher, Tobias Schwinn, Bob Sheil, Asbjørn Søndergaard, Lauren Vasey, Kathy Velikov, Tobias Wallisser, Michael Weinstock, Mark West, Nicholas Williams, Jan Willmann and Dylan Wood.