Keynote Speakers

Branko Kolarevic

Branko Kolarevic is a professor and former dean of the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He has taught architecture at several universities in North America and Asia and has lectured worldwide on the use of digital technologies in design and production. He has authored, edited or co-edited several books, including “Mass Customization and Design Democratization” with José Pinto Duarte. He was elected and served as president of several organizations: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Canadian Architectural Certification Board (CACB), and Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). He is a recipient of the ACADIA Award for Innovative Research in 2007 and ACADIA Society Award of Excellence in 2015. He holds doctoral and master’s degrees in design from Harvard University and a diploma engineer in architecture degree from the University of Belgrade.

Georg Vrachliotis

Georg Vrachliotis is a Full Professor and the Head of the Design, Data, and Society Group at TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. He leads “The New Open,” a flagship project focusing on open data for design and societal change. Holding a Ph.D. from ETH Zurich, Georg previously served as the Dean of Architecture at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where he was also a full professor specializing in architectural theory with an emphasis on digital culture. Georg’s career includes curating notable architecture exhibitions such as “Fritz Haller: Architect and Researcher” in Basel (2014), “Sleeping Beauty: Reinventing Frei Otto’s Multihalle” at the Venice Biennale (2018), and “Models, Media, and Methods: Frei Otto’s Architectural Research” at Yale University (2020). An accomplished author, he wrote “The New Technological Condition: Architecture and Design in the Age of Cybernetics,” (2022) among others. Georg is a member of the advisory board for the ARCH+ journal and serves as an external examiner at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London.

Achim Menges

Achim Menges is a registered architect in Frankfurt and full professor at the University of Stuttgart, where he is the founding director of the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) and the director of the Cluster of Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC). In addition, he has been Visiting Professor in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and held multiple other visiting professorships in Europe and the United States. He graduated with honours from the Architectural Association, AA School of Architecture in London, where he subsequently taught as Studio Master and Unit Master in the AA Graduate School and the AA Diploma School. Achim Menges’ practice and research focus on integrative computational design methods, robotic fabrication and construction processes, as well as advanced material and building systems for future-proof architecture. His work is based on an interdisciplinary approach in collaboration with structural engineering, systems and production engineering, computer science, material science, as well as the humanities and social science.