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ALLCOMPUTATION & RESEARCHDESIGN & PRACTICEEXPLORATIONS
THE BOOK (PDF)

21 projects

The Thoughts

  1. behavior information modelingJAN 2026For thirty years we've been getting very good at Building Information Modeling: every beam, every duct, every clash, tracked to the millimeter.
  2. neuroaestheticsDEC 2025Neuroaesthetics is the unglamorous name for a question everyone already feels: why does one room settle you and another keep you on edge?
  3. physics solversAPR 2026A physics solver is the most honest collaborator I have: it doesn't care what I intended, only what I actually built.
  4. generative aiJUN 2024Generative AI made the inspired gesture free. Anyone can produce a thousand renders before lunch, and a render is a promise, not a product.
  5. extended realitySEP 2022I started in a lab strapping headsets onto students to see whether a lesson lands harder when you can walk around inside it.
  6. comfort as dataMAY 2026You don't walk into a room and average your experience. You walk in and the thing that's wrong is the thing you notice: the glare, the echo, the cold draft on the back of your neck.
  7. drawing as interfaceMAR 2026For most of my life the drawing was the output. You designed the thing, then you drew it to prove it existed.
  8. evolutionary searchNOV 2025Evolutionary search is what I reach for when a problem is too tangled to solve head on: describe what good looks like, then let a population of designs breed, mutate, and compete until something clever falls out.
  9. heritage meets new techAPR 2026The usual choice with an old building is a trap: treat it as a museum piece no one may touch, or drop a glass-and-steel box in the middle and call it modern.
  10. buildings that respondJUN 2026Right now a building is a fixed guess. Someone chose the ceiling height and the window size years before you arrived, and you live inside their averaged assumptions whether they fit you or not.
  11. connecting the dotsJUN 2020When the art class was asked who here dislikes drawing, mine was the only hand that went up. Awkward.
  12. pelagñouJUN 2026Some projects hand you a tool; Pelagñou handed me a library card.
  13. explaining thingsJUL 2026How do you explain a complex, honestly boring technical subject so someone leans in instead of glazing over?
  14. adjacency is not accessJUN 2026A floor plan tells you which rooms touch. It will not tell you which rooms you can actually reach, and the gap between those two drawings is where the architecture is hiding.

The Huddle

RESEARCHSTUDIO AWARD

What if you built with the wind instead of bracing against it?

Stop fighting the wind and build with it: modules that grow along the gusts instead of bracing against them.

MACAD STUDIO · TEAM OF 4

WASP · KANGAROO · ALPACA4D

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WHAT

In Punta Arenas the wind never stops, so we stopped fighting it. The Huddle is a research and education hub grown from 4×4×4 m modules aggregated along the wind itself, wrapped in an envelope of three panel types (Shields, Lenses, Gills) that turns the facade into a readable map of climatic forces. A team of four, all hands on everything: María Sánchez Domínguez, Lakzhmy Mari Zaro, Charles Abi Chahine, and me.

WHY

Wind is the site's most abundant force, and the vernacular Kawesqar huts already knew what to do with it. Accepting the wind as a design partner, instead of a problem to brace against, turns the harshest constraint into the organizing logic of the whole building.

HOW

  1. WASP grows the module cluster along the wind patterns, solar exposure, and program, the way the Kawesqar huts huddled.
  2. Kangaroo settles the layout; Alpaca4D checks the structural behavior of the result.
  3. A Global Index algorithm distributes the three envelope panels, so the facade reads the climate back to you.
  4. Vertical turbines sit in the aggregation's own wind tunnels, harvesting the force the form was grown from.

WHAT CAME OF IT

Because the building is an aggregation of known parts, the exact number of parts is known at any moment: the architecture stays buildable arithmetic, not a sculpture. Wind, once a problem, ends up the project's material.