ar·ti·fi·ci·al·i·ty Lecture Series

Antón García-Abril is a European Licensed Architect and a registered architect in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He established Ensamble Studio in 2000 and cofounded WoHo in 2020. He has dedicated his career to developing typologies, technologies, and methodologies, advancing the fields of architecture and construction through internationally recognized work. Together with his partner, Débora Mesa, he has progressively redefined the role of the architect, adding to his design competencies those of the developer, the contractor, the fabricator, and the inventor. García-Abril has been a full professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2012, where he cofounded the POPlab that same year. He received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996 and holds a doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa. Balancing imagination and reality, art and science, their work innovates typologies, technologies, and methodologies to address issues as diverse as landscape construction and house prefabrication. From their earliest works, every project makes space for experimentation, aiming to advance their field. Their contributions to the theory and practice of architecture have received numerous international recognitions. Through their startup, WoHo, they are developing ways to increase quality and affordability in architecture by integrating off-site technologies.

Farzin Lotfi-Jam is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Cornell University, where he directs the Realtime Urbanism Lab. The lab focuses on the use of spatial media and technologies in urban research, particularly the impact of digitalization and real-time data on urban environments. He also leads Farzin Farzin, a design studio operating at the intersection of architecture, computation, and media. His work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the Sharjah Art Foundation. He received the 2022 Architecture League of New York Prize and has recently been supported by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation and the Graham Foundation. His publications include the co-authored book Modern Management Methods: Architecture, Historical Value, and the Electromagnetic Image (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City). His current book project, Realtime: Computing Southwest Asian and North American Urbanism, 1858-Now, traces how realtime technologies — from colonial telegraphs to digital twins — have operated as tools of imperial control, shaping urban life.

Olalekan Jeyifous (b. 1977) received a B.Arch. from Cornell University and is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work reimagines the intersections of architecture, community, and the environment through inventive visual storytelling. By merging physical and digital elements with historical and speculative contexts, his practice offers critical reflections on existing systems while imagining alternative ways of relating to one another and the spaces we inhabit. His art has been exhibited at major institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum, and Guggenheim Bilbao, and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and SFMOMA.

In addition to an extensive exhibition history, he has spent over a decade creating large-scale public installations and was co-commissioned to design a monument to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm for New York City’s She Built NYC initiative. His distinctions include the 2024 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design, the 2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, and two NYFA Fellowships. He has also been awarded residencies at MacDowell, The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and he currently serves as the 2026 Brooklyn Botanic Garden Heidi Nitze Fellow.

Florian Idenburg is an internationally renowned Dutch architect with over two decades of professional experience. After learning the ropes in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he founded SO – IL in 2008 together with Jing Liu. His years of working in cross-cultural settings make Idenburg a thoughtful and collaborative partner. With a joyous demeanor, he pursues innovation through working together. He has a particularly strong background in institutional spaces, leading the office on projects such as the Kukje Gallery and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, as well as Amant in Brooklyn. His strength lies in generating imaginative ideas and transforming those into real-world spaces and objects.

Jesse LeCavalier uses the tools of urban design and architecture to research, theorize, and speculate about infrastructure and logistics. He is the author of The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), and his design work has been recognized by the Sudbury 2050 urban design competition, the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, the Oslo Triennale, and the Seoul Biennale. LeCavalier was the Daniel Rose Visiting Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture (2017–19) and the 2010–11 Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan. His work has appeared in Cabinet, Public Culture, Places, Art Papers, and Harvard Design Magazine. His essay “The Restlessness of Objects” was the recipient of a 2013 Core77 Design Award.