ENSAV LAB
Intelligent Fabrication
Biographies
Karolin Schmidbaur
Karolin Schmidbaur is an internationally practicing architect and educator. She is Professor at the University of Innsbruck, institute of experimental architecture, building design and construction, and a Partner at Coop Himmelb(l)au. She received her Diploma in Architecture at the Technical University of Munich. Since 1992 she has worked internationally with Coop Himmelb(l)au in their offices in Austria, México, and the USA and became a partner and head of research in 2009. Throughout her career she has been active teaching at international architecture schools and became a Professor at the University of Innsbruck in 2017. Her interest lies in experimental design methodology that expands our architectural thinking at all scales. Karolin Schmidbaur is an active member of the German (since 1995) and the Austrian Chamber of Architects (since 2018).
Anahita Mirani
Anahita Mirani is an architect-engineer, PhD researcher, and associate lecturer at ENSA Paris-Malaquais. Her work is situated between architectural design, material science, structural analysis, and environmental assessment. Her doctoral research examines new modes of stone construction through experimental characterisation, mechanical testing, digital geometry, parametric modelling, prototype fabrication, and life-cycle assessment. She also studies hybrid assemblies that combine stone with a two-component polyurethane adhesive based on recycled polyol. In parallel with her research, she teaches scientific and technical disciplines in architecture, including constructive geometry, environmental assessment, and material-based design methods.
Elisabeth Lemercier
Elisabeth Lemercier, co-founder of the Bona-Lemercier architectural practice and a lecturer at ENSA Versailles, has developed a practice at the intersection of architecture, regeneration, scenography and experimental furniture design. Her research and teaching explore the links between architectural culture, design and contemporary ways of living.
Jordi Vivaldi
Jordi Vivaldi is a PhD architect (IOUD, Austria) and PhD candidate in philosophy (EGS, Switzerland), based in Vienna. His research engages speculative realism and new materialism, alongside twenty-first-century theories of experimental architecture, art, and technology. His current work focuses on transformations of Western subjectivity under the Anthropocene in architectural contexts, as well as on the development of “sibylline” modes of rationality that open up what philosophical materialism can be and do. He has taught theory and conducted research at several international institutions, including the University of Innsbruck (IOUD) and the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien – ATTP) in Austria, UCL Bartlett in the United Kingdom, IAAC–UPC in Spain, and Shenzhen University in China. In addition to numerous articles, essays, and lectures, he is co-author of The Threefold Logic of Advanced Architecture (Barcelona: Actar, 2021).
Marc Leschelier
Marc Leschelier is a French architect based in Paris. He builds architectures without function, entitled pre-architecture, in open spaces, sculpture parks, or any situation exempt from urban regulations. While inventing an architectural genre through the development of alternative constructive systems, Leschelier responds to the sclerosis of the architectural discipline by creating an immediate, naked, speaking architecture. Drawing inspiration from performance art, vernacular architecture and industrial abstraction, Leschelier’s pre-architecture is an attempt to break with the logic of the discipline and through its immediacy, to resynchronize with the speed of the present.
