CRUNCH: Postdigital Resources

Join us for presentations and round table discussion about post-digital strategies with speakers Toshiki Hirano, Toshikatsu Kiuchi, Gonzalo Vaillo and Nikoletta Karastathi. This event will be chaired by Professor Marjan Colletti, The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Building with digital technologies can be understood and utilised as a medium for faster and more precise processes that optimise construction. It can also be thought of as a medium to embrace the error and imprecision that digital technologies can offer. 

Searching for new imaginaries, a new generation of emerging interdisciplinary practitioners approach the phygital in unconventional ways that embrace qualitative and tactile qualities, low resolution and imprecision, folding tradition into the present.

This event is part of the inaugural CRUNCH Series at The Bartlett School of Architecture, replacing the International Lecture Series. Please note this event is first-come, first-served and is limited capacity. 

Speaker Biographies

Prof Marjan Colletti is Professor of Building Technology and of Postdigital Practice at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, a first worldwide. His academic achievements include: directing design-research and co-directing the Architecture MArch at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, founding REX|LAB and chairing the Institute for Experimental Architecture at Innsbruck University. He is currently investigating postdigitality, particularly when combined with NeoBaroque traits, and how it may shape current and future paradigms in architectural design and more broadly, in cultural production.

Toshiki Hirano is an architectural designer, researcher, and educator based in Tokyo, Japan. He is currently serving as a Project Assistant Professor and the Director of the International Architectural Education Platform, SEKISUI HOUSE - KUMA LAB at the University of Tokyo. Hirano obtained his Bachelor’s degree from Kyoto University before completing his Master of Architecture degree at Princeton University, where he was honored with the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize. Subsequently, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo. With his own studio, THD, he explores the crossroads of architecture, art, technology, craftsmanship, and philosophy.

Toshikatsu Kiuchi is the Director of the Toshikatsu Kiuchi Architect Office. He engages in a multidisciplinary practice ranging from art and furniture production to welfare facilities and public space design. From 2015 through 2019, Kiuchi conducted research at the University of Tokyo on the datafication of people’s interests and involvement in urban life.

Gonzalo Vaíllo is a registered architect in Spain and principal founder of the studio MORPHtopia. His work intertwines practice, design research and theory, focusing on aesthetics, technology and philosophy for an architectural design theory and methodology of the unknown potential of multi-agential objects. Various projects have been exhibited at the Italian Virtual Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2021) and at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2021). Gonzalo is also a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Experimental Architecture - Building Design and Construction at the University of Innsbruck.

Nikoletta Karastathi is an architect, a lecturer teaching on The Bartlett's Design for Manufacture MArch and Design for Performance & Interaction MArch programmes and a PhD candidate at The Bartlett, combining a background in both industry and academia. With nearly a decade of experience in award-winning practices in Newcastle and London, she has worked on high-end residential and commercial projects, from design to construction. In tandem, she has worked as a design tutor at various UK universities. Passionate about reinforcing the links between practice and academia, she also led the RIBA Northeast Research and Innovation Group.

More information

Image: Collaged model for Reinventing Texture. Toshiki Hirano, 2021