Event
April 2, 2024
3:30 PM – 7:00 PM
16 W. 61st St., 11th Floor Auditorium and Online
New York, NY
Photo Credit: Laia Mogas-Soldevila
Designing Healthier Materials and Therapeutic Spatial Interactions
The alarming effects of the rapidly changing climate have forced us to rethink making and manufacturing processes, reducing carbon footprint and adopting circular economy processes. At the same time, advances on materials allow us to explore emerging responsive and bioactive material properties. Biodynamic Environments symposium invites participants to approach health holistically through an exploration centered on biobased materials and on interactions with our environments that can enhance our health and wellbeing.
The term “biodynamic” when used in the context of agriculture, addresses a farm as a self-sufficient, dynamic living organism. The same term, in the context of environmental medicine, addresses the dynamic processes, seen as the “biodynamic interface,” between humans and environments that impact our heath. What are biodynamic environments in the context of design and architecture? How do we design for healthier and therapeutic spatial interactions? How do we educate towards healthier futures through designing and making?
Please join us for series of presentations and discussion by invited guests and New York Tech participants experts in design, computation, materials, and health, to imagine healthier futures through design and material innovation.
Learn more about the Future of Design lecture series.
Introduction
Symposium Chair
Moderators
Marcella Del Signore
Associate Professor Director, Ms Urban & Regional Design, New York Tech School of Architecture and Design
Christian Pongratz
Professor Director, M.S. Health & Design, New York Tech School of Architecture and Design
Alessandro Melis
IDC Foundation Endowed Chair; Professor, Director, M.S. Programs (M.S. Act)
Florencia Vetcher
Assistant Professor Director, Interior Design, New York Tech School of Architecture and Design
Alexandros Tsamis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Architecture, Associate Director, CASE Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology Graduate Program Director, Built Ecologies. MS & Ph.D.
Alexandros Tsamis is an architect and assistant professor at the School of Architecture, RPI. He currently serves as the Graduate Program Director of the Built Ecologies MS & Ph.D. programs and the Associate Director of CASE.
He earned his Ph.D. in Architecture, Design and Computation and Master of Science (SMArchS) in Design and Building Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Previously, he served as the Post-professional Graduate Program Director in Design at Adolfo Ibanez University in Chile and has taught at MIT and the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University.
Tsamis works at the intersection of design and architectural sciences. He focuses on next-generation composite materials, climate-adaptive and cyber-physical energy systems, and advanced manufacturing technologies.
Laia Mogas-Soldevila
Director of DumoLab Research
Laia Mogas-Soldevila is an Assistant Professor of Graduate Architecture and Director of DumoLab Research at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.
Laia's research focuses on new sustainable material practices bridging science, engineering, and the arts. Her pedagogy supports novel theory and applied methods understanding biomaterials and bio-based fabrication in product design and architecture. She has built scholarship over the past ten years reconsidering matter as a fundamental design driver and partnering with scientists to redesign it towards unprecedented environmentally attuned capabilities.
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Laia holds an interdisciplinary doctorate in materials science, biomedical engineering, and arts and crafts from Tufts University School of Engineering, two master's degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a licensed architect with a minor in Fine Arts by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia School of Architecture in Barcelona and the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Katia Zolotovsky, PhD
Assistant Professor, Departments of Art + Design and Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Director of the Biointeractive Design Lab, Northeastern University
Katia is an architect and a biologist by training and her work lies at the intersection of sustainable innovation, computational design, and material technologies. She holds a Ph.D. in Computation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her dissertation focused on design and computation with biologically active materials.
Before joining Northeastern Katia was an Assistant Professor at Rhode Island School of Design where she taught sustainable material innovation and spatial design and led research initiatives focusing on technological innovation for sustainability and community engagement. Katia’s new Biointeractive Design lab at Northeastern brings together designers, scientists, and engineers to explore how to scale up lab technologies to design materials, devices, wearables, and building components for climate adaptation.
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Beyond the innovation of materials and fabrication tools, the group explores how emergent technologies redefine human experiences and aesthetics. Katia’s interdisciplinary research has been published in both design and science high-impact journals. She has won awards at international conferences, including the Living Machine, Education and Research in Computer-Aided Design in Europe, and EURO Bio-inspired Materials. Her work has been supported by national grants such as the NSF Division of Materials Research, Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund, and NSF’s Coastal Ecology Assessment Innovation and Modeling.
Catherine Murphy
Parsons Healthy Materials Lab
Catherine Murphy has led educational programming at Parsons Healthy Materials Lab since 2017, alongside which she is an adjunct faculty at Parsons School of Design and Columbia GSAPP teaching classes on materials where she guides the development of methodologies to eliminate toxics and reduce environmental impacts.
She credits her upbringing in the West of Ireland countryside with her deep rooted interest in materials, circularity, and craft. Her practice integrates design, project management, and materials consultancy, drawing from 12 years of experience in designing healthier and sustainable buildings.
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Catherine works exclusively in renovation and re-use, utilizing her background in textiles and handcraft to repair existing structures while implementing core design and construction techniques for healthier and sustainable built environments. Catherine holds a Master of Fine Art in Interior Design from Parsons School of Design and a degree (Hons.) in Fine Craft Design (Embroidery) from the University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Mitchell Joachim
Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor of Practice at NYU
Dr. Joachim is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Associate Professor of Practice at NYU. Mitchell upheld noteworthy leadership roles as a University Senator and Co- Chair of Global Design NYU.
Formerly, he worked as an architect at the professional offices of Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, Moshe Safdie in Massachusetts, and I.M. Pei in New York. He has won many awards including: Fulbright Scholarship, LafargeHolcim Acknowledgement Prize, Ove Arup Foundation Grant, Architect R+D Award, AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, 1st Place International Architecture Award, Zumtobel Award for Sustainability, Architizer A+ Award, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities.
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He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Safdie Architects, and the Martin Society for Sustainability at MIT. Mitchell was featured in numerous articles: “The 100 People Who Are Changing America” in Rolling Stone, “The Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To” in Wired, “50 Under 50 Innovators of the 21st Century” by Images Publishing Group, “The NOW 99” in Dwell, and “Future of The Environment” in Popular Science. He co-authored four books, “Super Cells: Building with Biology” (TED Books), “Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned” (Prestel, 2014), “XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design” (Actar 2016), and “Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities” (Actar 2019). His design work has been exhibited in numerous locations including MoMA in New York, DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, MASS MoCA in North Adams, The Building Centre in London, DAZ in Berlin, OCAD in Toronto, NAI in Rotterdam, Seoul Biennale, and Venice Biennale. Previously, he was the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto and faculty at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Rensselaer, Washington (St. Louis), Cornell, Parsons, and EGS. He earned a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD at Harvard University, M.Arch at Columbia University with honors.