The research project is headed by Patrik Schumacher, a leading figure in the fields of parametric design and architectural design research. Schumacher is leading a team of distinguished researchers, who each can look back on a proven track record of academic research and experimental digital design practice, focusing on advanced scripting techniques, digital formal experimentation and the understanding of our built environment as an interface for interaction with its users.
This research is hosted and supported by the IoA at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and generously funded by a PEEK research grant provided by the FWF Austria.
Patrik Schumacher is principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and is leading the firm since Zaha Hadid’s passing in April 2016. He joined Zaha Hadid in 1988, has been a co-author on most projects and was seminal in developing Zaha Hadid Architects to become a 400 strong global architecture and design brand. In 1996 he founded the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association where he continues to teach. He is lecturing worldwide and recently held the John Portman Chair in Architecture at Harvard’s GSD. Over the last 20 years he has contributed over 100 articles to architectural journals and anthologies. In 2008 he coined the phrase Parametricism and has since published a series of manifestos promoting Parametricism as the new epochal style for the 21 st century. In 2010/2012 he published his two-volume theoretical opus magnum “The Autopoiesis of Architecture”. He recently guest-edited the magazine AD – Parametricism 2.0 – setting architecture’s agenda for the 21 st Century with a new emphasis on the societal relevance of parametricism. Schumacher’s contribution to the discourse of contemporary architecture is also evident in his published works and interviews which can be read at www.patrikschumacher.com
Robert R. Neumayr is an architect, researcher, and educator. He studied architecture in Vienna and Paris before completing his MArch 2 with distinction at London’s AA Graduate School Design Research Lab. He is running his Vienna-based practice unsquare.org (www.unsquare.at) and is partner and design director at hoppe architekten, Vienna. He has been teaching and lecturing internationally, most notably in Philadelphia, Innsbruck and Vienna, where he was teaching with Will Alsop (TU), Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Ali Rahim, and Kazuyo Sejima at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from 2007 to 2016. From 2015 to 2017 he was a lecturer at UPenn teaching the post-professional design studio at PennDesign’s AAD program. He is currently teaching at the faculty of architecture in Innsbruck. Since 2001 he has been researching on responsive environments, interactive architecture, parametric design and contemporary digital design practice. His research and projects have been published and exhibited internationally.
Josip Bajcer is a PhD student at the Institute of Architecture (IoA) Vienna. He is a Vienna-based architect, designer and researcher. After graduating from Studio Zaha Hadid he was teaching in Austria, Germany and Brazil and is a former assistant professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna – Studio Sejima. His research is at the intersection between design, architecture theory and philosophy.
Mathias Fuchs was born in Munich in 1979. He received his PhD in Pure Mathematics from Marseille University in 2007, after studying Mathematics in Munich, Dresden and Marseille. He has since been a scholar at Graduiertenkolleg Gruppen und Geometrie at the Mathematical Institute of Göttingen University and has held a postdoctoral positions at the Institute of Numerical and Applied Mathematics there until 2009. He then went on to work in applied areas of Mathematics. First, he held several postdoctoral positions at the Institute of Bioinformatics of the Göttingen University Medical Centre until 2012 and then several ones at the Institut für medizinische Informationsverarbeitung, Biometrie, Epidemiologie at the Medical Centre of Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. Since 2016, he is Senior Researcher at the CODE group of Zaha Hadid Architects.
Daniel Bolojan is a Vienna based researcher and architect. He is a Junior Associate with CoopHimmelb(l)au where he has been practicing on numerous international projects and competitions. He is leading the office push to develop custom computational tools, computational design strategies, virtual reality/augmented reality applications, and robotic fabrication processes. Previously he studied architecture at UAUIM Bucharest (Department of Architecture) and received his diploma at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Studio Zaha Hadid in 2014.
Bogdan Zaha has studied at the Ion Mincu University in Bucharest and the Faculty of Architecture in Timisoara, Romania before studying and graduating from the University of Applied Arts’ Studio Zaha Hadid in Vienna where he is currently a PhD research fellow. He has been teaching at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and a great number of workshops focused on computation Design and Parametric Architecture in Romania, Austria and Italy. After a number of years of work in Romania and Austria, Bogdan joined Zaha Hadid Architects in 2014. Bogdan is part of the office’s design team and has worked on a significant number of projects and competitions around the world. He has worked on many project stages with a focus on parametric modelling and advanced geometrical design methodologies.