Lawson Spencer

Lawson Spencer is a Research Associate at the Robotic Construction Lab (RCL) at Cornell University and Project Lead at HANNAH Office. Spencer's research broadly investigates computational methods to fabricate and structurally simulate innovative applications of biodegradable materials such as timber and dirt with a focus on robotics and timber. Additionally, Spencer has an extended amount of research in developing interactive, augmented, and mixed-reality (AR/MR) fabrication workflows for discrete timber assemblies.

Academic Research/Specialty Areas

  • Architectural technology
  • Collaborative practice
  • Material practice
  • Structures in architecture
  • Sustainability
  • Visual representation
  • Robotic fabrication
  • Parametric design
  • Computational construction
  • Structure simulation

Related Pages

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

  • AIA Upjohn Research Initiative Collaborator
  • Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities Fellow
  • Mary Miller Lyons Graduate Fellow

Publications (Selected)

  • Lok, Leslie, Sasa Zivkovic, and Lawson Spencer. Forthcoming. "UNLOG: A Deployable, Lightweight, and Bending-Active Timber Construction Method." Technology|Architecture + Design 7 (1).
  • Lok, Leslie, Asbiel Samaniego, and Lawson Spencer. 2021. "Timber De-Standarized: A Mixed-Reality Framework for the Assembly of Irregular Tree Log Structures." In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), edited by B. Farahi, B. Bogosian, J. Scott, J. L. García del Castillo y López, K. Dörfler, J. A. Grant, S. Parasho, and V. A. A. Noel, 222–31. ACADIA.
  • Jiang, Jennifer, Lawson Spencer, and Liss C. Werner. 2021. "Public Gratification Palace: A Framework for Increased Civic Engagement." In Media Architecture Biennale 20, 131–40. MAB20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3469410.3469423.

Selected Work

  • two people building a structure out of logs, viewed through a window

    Timber De-Standardized (2021), with RUBI (Leslie Lok and Asbiel Samaniego).

  • wooden sculpture on a green lawn under trees

    UnLog (2022), University of Virginia, a HANNAH project (Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic). image / Nana A. Iso

  • aerial view of a wooden sculpture on a university campus

    UnLog Tower (2022), Leslie Lok with Kurt Jordan, Matthew T. Reiter, and Sasa Zivkovic. image / Cynthia Kuo

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