Role: Partners

Salvador Breed (1984) is a professional audiofreak, composing and sculpting spatial sound for a wide variety of contexts such as live performances, fashion shows, video-art, commercials and installations.

In 2007, Salvador co-founded 4DSOUND Technologies and has since been serving as its Creative Developer, focusing on blending boundaries between music and sound design and advancing the applications of spatial sound technologies in the creative industry realm.

Salvador has been a close collaborator of Philip Beesley and Living Architecture Systems Group since 2013. Together they created artworks that captivate one’s attention and excite one’s imagination.

Besides his artistic career, Salvador has acted as a member of the Guidance Committee Professorship at University of the Arts Utrecht (HKU) with dr. Jan IJzermans (lector) & dr. Arja Veerman (postdoc-researcher), prof. dr. Kees Dorst & dr. Mieke Moor Marinda Verhoeven-Spek.

Born in 1983 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Paul Oomen is a sound researcher, composer, curator, inventor and writer.

From an early age Paul gathered experience in theatre as an actor and director, and as a musician trained in percussion, piano and singing. He holds an MA with Honours in Music Composition from the Conservatory of Amsterdam and Universität der Künste Berlin.

In 2007, Paul founded 4DSOUND Technologies, a creative development studio specialising in spatial sound. Over the last decade, he has increasingly started to dedicate his work to fundamental research on the relationship of sound, space and perception, which Paul fosters and advances as the Head of Development and Curation in the context of the Spatial Sound Institute.

His collaboration with Philip Beesley and LASG is focused on synthesising the fields of spatial sound and living architecture to find new exciting approaches to both disciplines.

Poul Holleman (1984) is a spatial sound expert and software artist, who conducts extensive research, discovers new developments within the field while teaching software design in the domain of interactive media at the University of the Arts Utrecht (HKU), and advances the possibilities of the medium in interdisciplinary contexts.

Poul serves as Director and Lead Software of 4DSOUND Technologies, a creative development studio he co-founded in 2007. In his practice, Poul focuses on application of spatial sound technologies to a variety of artforms ranging from light installations to interactive architecture and live electronic performances.

Since 2017, Poul has collaborated with Philip Beesley and LASG, bringing in his knowledge on production and integration of sound in kinetic architecture and space, which led to numerous enthralling discoveries and exceptional immersive installations.

Next to his artistic achievements, Poul also holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Sociology (University of Amsterdam, Cum Laude).

Professor Michael Stacey is an award-winning architect, who combines practice, teaching, research and writing, based in London at the Bartlett / UCL and Michael Stacey Architects. Michael Stacey is the author of a wide range of publications and books including Component Design, 2001, Digital Fabrication, 2004, Concrete: a studio design guide, 2011, Prototyping Architecture, 2013, Aluminium and Durability, 2014, second edition 2015, Aluminium Recyclability and Recycling, 2015, Aluminium: Flexible and Light, 2016, and Aluminium: Sympathetic and Powerful, 2020.

James Forren is an Associate Professor of Architecture in Design and Technology.  He directs the Material, Body, and Environment Laboratory (MBELab) which investigates the production of architectural compo­nents and assemblies, concrete and composite technologies, and people’s experiences with materials in industrial, design, and public contexts. James Forren’s research utilizes computational, fine arts, and anthropological methods in the study of new materials and material technologies in architectural contexts. Digital technologies and their application to construction processes are one component of this work. Other areas of investigation include material research and its relationship to computation, as well as the exploration of new design processes. Writings, exhibits, and built projects are the vehicles for inquiry, often carried out in partnership with engineering, arts, and social science disciplines, as well as industry and community groups.

His research has been published in scholarly journals and conferences including the The Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) and The Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) and Scroope: The Cambridge Architectural Journal. His exhibited work has received awards at Mongeometrija 2018 and The S.ARCH (Sustainable Architecture) 2019 and 2020. His current research is supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration (NFRF-E) program for the transdisciplinary project, “Gesture and Form: A Field-based Approach to New Methods of Architecture and Handcraft in Textiles Using Augmented Reality Technologies”; and through industry collaboration with the Canadian Precast Concrete Institute (CPCI) and granting support from the Jeffrey Cook Charitable Trust for the directed research project, “Soft Rock: Artificial Rock Technologies Explored as Soft Systems”.

Tomasz Jaskiewicz is an Assistant Professor of Explorative Prototyping and Interactive Environments at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology. In his work he develops and evaluates tools, methods and strategies supporting iterative design processes, and applies them to empower people in the context of smart buildings and smart cities. He actively bridges academic research and design education, having initiated and coordinated the Interactive Environments Minor program at TU Delft, directing the Living Office Delft Design Lab and coordinating the Interactive Technology Design course at his faculty. During his career he also co-founded a startup Hive Systems developing software for designing and programming distributed networks of interactive agents.

Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen’s research centers on the intersection between architecture and computer science. Her focus is on the profound changes that digital technologies instigate in the way architecture is thought, designed and built. In 2004 Ramsgaard Thomsen completed an interdisciplinary PhD in architecture and computer science. In 2005 Ramsgaard Thomsen founded the Centre for IT and Architecture research group (CITA) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation. In 2010 Ramsgaard Thomsen became full Professor in Architecture and Digital Technologies.

At CITA, Ramsgaard Thomsen has piloted a special research focus on the new digital-material relations that digital technologies bring forth. Investigating advanced computer modelling, digital fabrication and material specification CITA has been central in the forming of an international research field examining the changes to material practice in architecture. This has been led by a series of research investigations developing concepts and technologies as well as strategic projects such as the international Innochain research network (EU MSCA ITN) that fosters interdisciplinary sharing and dissemination of expertise and supports new collaborations in the fields of architecture, engineering and design and Complex Modelling examining the infrastructures of the information model.

After graduating in architecture (1998) from the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, Henriette Bier worked with Morphosis (1999-2001) on internationally relevant projects in the US and Europe. She has taught digitally-driven architectural design (2002-2003) at universities in Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and since 2004 she mainly teaches and researches at Technical University Delft (TUD) with a focus on Robotic Building. Bier initiated and coordinated (2005-06) a workshop and lecture series on Digital Design and Fabrication with invited guests from MIT and ETHZ, and finalized (2008) her PhD on System-embedded Intelligence in Architecture. She coordinated EU projects E-Archidoct and F2F Continuum (2007-10) and led 4TU projects RDCB and Adaptive Joints (2015-18). From 2017 to 2019, Henriette Bier served as a professor at the Dessau Institute of Architecture. Results of her research are internationally published in books, journals and conference proceedings and she regularly lectures and leads workshops internationally.

Paul Pangaro has been studying conversation and design, both human-human and human-machine, for over thirty years. His design practice, lectures, and writing have centered on designing for conversation and seeing design as conversation. His career spans roles as interaction designer, entrepreneur, researcher, performer, and professor. Currently Pangaro is creating #NewMacyMeetings, a renewal of the original Macy Meetings from 1940s and 50s that became the foundation of cybernetics, now with 21st-century trans-global and trans-generational constituents. In 2018 Pangaro, with TJ McLeish, created a full-scale replica of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, displayed at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2020 and now part of the permanent collection of ZKM museum in Karlsruhe, Germany. In January 2019 Pangaro became Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His academic career includes a BS in Humanities/Computer Science from MIT (after which he joined the research staff at the Architecture Machine Group) and a PhD with Gordon Pask in Conversation Theory in the Cybernetics Department at Brunel University (UK). He collaborated with Pask for over a decade. Pangaro recently formed the non-profit Cybernetic Media to help preserve and extend the rich legacy of cybernetics.

Navid Navab (CA/IR) is a media alchemist, interdisciplinary composer, and tabletop cosmologist. Interested in the poetics of schizophonia, gesture, and embodiment, his work investigates the transmutation of matter and the enrichment of its performative qualities. Navid uses gestures, rhythms and events from everyday life as a basis for real time compositions, resulting in augmented acoustical­ poetry and painterly light that enchant improvisational and pedestrian movements. 

Navab has led large scale interdisciplinary research projects at IRCAM Paris, CRIMMT McGill Montreal, Computer Aided Medical Procedures Group TUM Munich, Milieux and Hexagram networks at Concordia Montreal, and CIID Copenhagen.  Navid currently co-directs the Topological Media Lab, where he leverages phenomenological studies to inform the creation of computationally-enchanted environments. TML projects serve as investigations in the construction of fresh modes of cultural knowledge and the critical studies of media arts and techno-science, bringing together practices of speculative inquiry, scientific investigation and artistic research-creation practices. 

His works, which which take on the form of responsive architecture, site specific interventions, interactive scenographies, kinetic sculptures, and multimodal performances, have been presented at diverse venues such as: Ars Electronica, Contemporary Arts Museum of Zagreb, Nemo Biennale Paris, Japan Society NY, Kapelica Gallery Slovenia, Canadian Center for Architecture, HKW Berlin, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Digital Arts Biennial Montreal, Musiikin Aika Finland, SONICA Scotland, Eufonic Spain, and milanOltre Festival Italy.

Research-creation statement: 

I maintain the view that computation is foremost a material process, non-linear, largely indeterminate, vibrant with life, and irreducible to deterministic models. Coming from this stance, my artistic process aims to preserve the richness of uncanny material-computational processes while leveraging them compositionally. The act of composing computational media could entail the orchestration of event dynamics to quasi-deterministically enact degrees of instability and to enchant the stuff-of-the-medium. This process starts with of an ethico-aesthetical search for the excitable mysteries of matter (material-energy-affective processes), and leads to a careful orchestration of sensuous moments of knowing with others, humans or none.