A known advocate of digital/computational design promoting research-based teaching since 2000, investigating the feedback system between designer-computer and how it changes how a ‘(post)digital architect’ imagines, produces and communicates design. Students gain often virtuoso design and software/hardware skills plus a theoretical understanding of the contemporary debate and of their own work.

Over the years, I have developed a methodology targeted at the shifting paradigms of design-based research in architecture. It is focused on digital architecture, recently on post-digital practice (the world’s first and only professorship), investigating how digital technologies can change the way we think, discuss and build architecture.

Main research agendas:

Post-Digitality (probing the present)
Teaching: software/hardware/machinic skills. Contemporariness and innovation are paramount to my teaching/research/own work. I am particularly interested in a hybrid approach between CAD processes (2D drafting, 2,5D drawings, 3D modeling, 3,5D simulations) and CAD/CAM processes (2D laser cutting, 2,5D CNC milling, 3D Rapid Prototyping; 3,5D robotic fabrication). My highly skilled students have a clear career advantage in leading architectural practices.
Research: technology/novelty/contemporariness. It investigates the impact of digital technologies onto contemporary architecture, how they can widen the architectural vocabulary and improve the way we design and make buildings. It encompasses software/hardware advances, novel fabrication techniques, building materials and their use involving industrial robots (REX|LAB @ Innsbruck University).

Digital Culture (understanding the past)
Teaching: structure/form/ornament. Advanced computer-aided techniques/technologies are key in developing new paradigms in the 21st century; yet skilled students should also be capable to critically reflect on their own production and the on-going discourse in architecture (technologies/aesthetics/environments). Strong references to past and present cultural phenomena complement my teaching: e.g. the revival of ornamentation, the Neo-Baroque, European Organicism, Islamic Architecture etc..
Research: context/aesthetics/language. It contextualizes architecture as cultural production, embedding new forms/materials and a revised understanding of performance/ornament into a longer history of art/architecture/philosophy. A particular interest at the contemporary Neo-Baroque contributed to its theoretical/aesthetic foundations. With this ‘view in the rear mirror’, architects may accept their accountability towards society as much as individual clients.

Hybrid Environments (envisaging the future)
Teaching: cities/territory/infrastructure. Architects carry a huge responsibility in reprogramming the built and natural habitat to respond to the acute problems of ecology/sustainability. I teach my students how architecture is interfaced between technology and nature; and how intelligent architecture should provide adaptive and novel solutions in terms of form/program/materiality/energy/cities/environments… Students develop their work in various scales, from micro (materiality, bio-technologies) to 1:1 (prototyping, fabrication) to macro (understanding cities, landscapes and ecosystems of the Alpine territory but not only).
Research: typologies/nature/artificiality. This research ‘pro-jects’ (designs and predicts) possible scenarios for adaptive building typologies/novel fabrication techniques/material intelligences as well as buildings/cities that interface stronger with the natural environment. Several of my projects such as the Alga(e)zebo and the Algae-Cellunoi explore architecture meeting nature halfway; I have also led various design studios, collaborated trans-disciplinarily to build various installations related to this topic.