Application

Institutional Status

I am a second year Ph.D. student in the Design and Computation Group at MIT's School of Architecture. Before entering the doctoral program I did my Masters of Science in Architecture under Prof. Larry Sass's guidance, within the Digital Design and Fabrication group and with the support of the Center for Bits and Atoms at the MIT MediaLab. Before MIT I was working as an architect and media designer in my native Bogota (Colombia).

Fabrication Experience

As a research assistant in the Digital Design and Fabrication group I worked on the development of snap-fit design languages for macro-scale fabrication that enabled both parametric and generative design moves. My masters thesis, A Generative 2D Grammar for 3D fabrication, was awarded the SMArchS 2007 prize for the best thesis, and has since transformed into a couple of published papers that explore the idea of 'Generative Fabrication'.

Outside MIT, as a computational design specialist working for KPF NY, I was in charge of developing parametric models and files for fabrication. With fellow Ph.D. student Kenfield Griffith I regularly conduct workshops in different countries about digital design and fabrication (using mainly rhinoscripting and 1 axis flat-cutting machines). We have so far done 1 workshop in Lima, Peru; 2 in Santiago de Chile, and Cuba and Colombia are next steps in the 2008-2009 IAP.

I am an expert user of Lasercutter, Waterjet Cutter, 3D printer, and CNC tools. I have no experience in electronics, networking and communications, or molding.

hardware tools

ZCorp 3D Printer, Stratasys FDM Printer, Modela Miller, Roland CAMM Vinyl Cutter, Universal Laser Cutter, Water Jet Cutter

software tools

CATIA, Generative Components, AutoCAD, 3DMax, SketchUp, Rhino, Adobe CSuite

programming skills

fluent in JAVA, VBScript
learning C++/OpenGL

Motivation

I want to be able to prototype anything. See my ideas for the final project; an idea I had during my first year at MIT, but that I haven't had the time/resources/knowledge to take into completion.