SHAPE COMPUTATION LAB - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Architect and Professor at the Federal University of Viçosa
Andressa Martinez is an architect and professor at the Federal University of Viçosa (DAU-UFV), Brazil, teaching in undergraduate and graduate levels (Msc in Architecture). Since 2015 she has been the Director of the Digital Manufacturing Research Laboratory (Nó.Lab). The major focus of her research is digital design processes and fabrication. She has taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro a series of Design Studios and courses in Digital Modeling (2009, 2012-2013). In 2007, Andressa was selected for an academic exchange at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, with a scholarship offered by European Union. In 2005, she won an Honorable Mention in the Tomorrow Architect Competition (IAB-RJ). She also won a Second Place in the House 1.0 award (2003), a competition for social housing projects, promoted by ABCP in Brazil. Andressa holds a BS in Architecture and Urbanism and a MSc and DSc in Urbanism from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Job Titles:
- Director / Professor of Architectur
- Professor at the School of Architecture
Athanassios (Thanos) Economou is Professor at the School of Architecture in the College of Design, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou's teaching and research are in the areas of shape grammars, computational design, computer-aided design and design theory, with over sixty published papers in these areas. He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab, a research group that explores how the visual nature of shape can be formally implemented with new technologies to enable new paradigms in visual computation, design automation, creative design and digital heritage. Recent projects include the Shape Machine, a new computational technology that allows shape matching in CAD systems, and Courtsweb, the most significant visual database on Federal Courthouses, sponsored by GSA and US.Courts. Design projects from his studios at Georgia Tech have received prestigious awards in international and national architectural competitions. He has been invited to give talks, seminars, and workshops at several universities including MIT, Harvard, TU Vienna, U. Michigan, KAIST, Chiao Tung U Taiwan, Emory, Seoul National U, Cambridge U, Tsinghua U, UCLA, NTUA, U.Thessaly, U.Aegean, among others. Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture from NTUA, Athens, Greece, an M.Arch from USC, and a PhD in Architecture from UCLA.
Heather Ligler is a PhD Candidate in the Design Computation concentration in the School of Architecture, College of Design at Georgia Institute of Technology. Within the School, she is also a research assistant in the Shape Computation Lab and a lecturer for the Architectonics in Greece + Italy Program. Her ongoing research investigates the evolution of John Portman's architectural language from his 1964 Atlanta residence, Entelechy I, to his emblematic mega-projects for atrium hotels and mixed-use urban developments all over the world. Her larger research interests focus on how shape computation provides another lens to explore the logic of spatial systems in architectural design. Heather is a registered architect in the State of Georgia and a member of the American Institute of Architects. Her background includes professional experience with John Portman & Associates (2007-2013), Gensler (2007), and Cooper Carry (2005-2006). Heather holds a MS Arch from Georgia Tech and dual Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Interior Architecture degrees from Auburn University.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant / PhD Student
James Park is a PhD Student in the School of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research investigates courthouses as a building type and focuses on designing and implementing a generative description of the building type in the form of a shape grammar. James is a research assistant at the Shape Computation Lab and his contributions include the administration of a funded research project, Courtsweb: A visual database of contemporary US courthouses, in collaboration with GSA and US Courts; generative and parametric modeling in formal design studies; and design and implementation of various database and web applications. He is an instructor for the series of courses on computational media and modeling at the School of Architecture and a teaching assistant for the Georgia Tech Architectonics in Greece and Italy Study Abroad Program. James holds a BSArch and MArch from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Quentin Pegram is a Master Architecture Candidate in the School of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology and a research assistant in the Shape Computation Lab. In the SLC, he is involved in preparation and design of a comprehensive book on courthouse design in the U.S. His professional background includes working for two years at The Zenner Group, a small commercial architecture firm in Atlanta. Interning at The Zenner Group, he has worked on dozens of medium scale commercial buildings, from schematics through construction.
Stephanie Douthitt is an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Shape Computation Lab, School of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work in the lab ranges from the production of diagrams and 3d-models to interface design for Courtsweb, the software that is currently developed in the lab for the documentation and formal analysis of contemporary federal courthouses (Courtsweb: A formal specification of Federal Courthouses, GSA/US Courts, 2011-2015). She is currently working towards the completion of her BS.Arch at the School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Tzu-Chieh Kurt Hong is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The current research of Kurt is mainly focusing on implementation of shape computation system, including the development of geometry/graph kernel, novel data representations and shape recognition algorithms. Kurt is a research assistant at the Shape Computation Lab working with Dr. Thanos Economou and his works include the implementation of shape grammar interpreter, generative modeling system of US Courthouse design and generative modeling system of Froebel blocks. Before entering Shape Computation Lab, Kurt was a research assistant at the Digital Building Lab working with Dr. Dennis Shelden, and his main contribution to Digital Building Lab included the implementation of Automatic Routing System in architecture and an interactive web-based data visualization platform, Smart 3D Atlanta. Kurt holds BSEE, MSEE, MArch from the National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), and MSArch from the University of Michigan.
Job Titles:
- Professor in the Civil and Environment Engineering Department at Shantou University
- Visiting Scholar
Ying Yu is Professor in the Civil and Environment Engineering department at Shantou University, China. She got her PhD from Zhejiang University, China. Dr. Yu's teaching and research are in the areas of design of large span structures and deployed structures. She has published over twenty papers in these areas. Her funded projects include the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National key research and development program and so on. As a visiting scholar in the Georgia Institute of Technology at 2019, she worked with Prof. Economou on combining origami with shape grammar, which brings us a new perspective of designing origami structures.