Marirena Kladeftira

Marirena Kladeftira is a Design Tech Innovation Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Cornell Design Tech through the fall 2025 semester. She will then become an Assistant Professor in the department beginning in January 2026.

By bridging design, fabrication, and human craft, Kladeftira investigates adaptive, low-impact construction systems. She challenges traditional notions of automation, prioritizing localized, anthropocentric solutions that enhance human agency and vocational fulfillment. She has contributed to digital manufacturing and material processing methods, design methodologies for modular systems, and new models of cooperation with construction robots.

Her work has earned recognition through awards, invited talks, and exhibitions at prestigious venues, including the Venice Biennale, ZAZ Bellerive Museum, Kunsthalle Zurich, and the Swiss Sustainability Forum.

Kladeftira holds a doctorate from ETH Zurich as an NCCR Digital Fabrication doctoral fellow. Her thesis investigated the potential of additive manufacturing (AM) for ultra-lightweight modular structures by distilling intelligence in the smallest part of the system: its joints. Before joining Cornell, she was a postdoctoral researcher at EPFL, researching human-robot collaboration for adaptive fabrication, hybrid craft, and sustainable reuse practices.

Related News

• Advancing the Mission: New Faculty Continue Expanding Expertise Across Disciplines
• Marirena Kladeftira: A Post-Digital Perspective for Architecture and Humanity

Classes (Selected)

• DESIGN 6197 Special Topics in Design — Anthropocentric Models of Making with Cooperative Robots 
• DESIGN 6152 Design and Making Across Disciplines II

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Prōtóplasto, 3D Pioneers Challenge (2024), finalist
• WireWise App, Digital Top 10 Switzerland (2024)
• Frame Awards Best Use of Material (2022), shortlisted
• Arc Awards Digitalization (2022), honorable mention
• ETH Innovation Partnership Grant (2020)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Prōtóplasto (2023–24), Futurama Innovation Hub, Aargau, Switzerland
• Digital Bamboo (2020–21), Time Space Existence Exhibition, Venice, Italy, and ZAZ Bellerive Museum, Zurich, Switzerland
• Bespoke 3D printed joints (2022), Swiss Sustainability Forum, Bern, Switzerland

Publications (Selected)

• Leschok, Matthias*, Marirena Kladeftira*, Eftekhar Nik, and Benjamin Dillenburger. "Prōtóplasto." In Fabricate 2024. Copenhagen, 2024.

• Kladeftira, Marirena, Matthias Leschok, Eleni Skevani, Davide Tanadini, Patrick Ole Ohlbrock, Pierluigi D'Acunto, and Benjamin Dillenburger. "Digital Bamboo: A Study on Bamboo, 3D-Printed Joints, and Digitally Fabricated Building Components for Ultralight Structures." In Hybrids & Haecceities, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). Philadelphia, 2022.

• Kladeftira, Marirena, Demetris Shammas, Mathias Bernhard, and Benjamin Dillenburger. "Printing Whisper Dishes: Large-Scale Binder Jetting for Outdoor Installations." In Recalibration: On Imprecision and Infidelity, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). Mexico City, 2018.