Marirena Kladeftira

Marirena Kladeftira is a Design Tech Innovation Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Cornell Design Tech. By bridging design, fabrication, and human craft, she 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 made contributions to digital manufacturing and material processing methods, design methodologies for modular systems, as well as 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.

Kladeftira specializes in Computation and Digital Fabrication.

Related News

• 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 finalist (2024)
• WireWise App - Digital Top 10 Switzerland (2024)
• Frame Awards 2022 - Best use of material, shortlisted (2022)
• Arc Awards 2022 - Digitalization, honorable mention (2022)
• ETH Innovation Partnership Grant (2020)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Prōtóplasto, Futurama Innovation Hub, Switzerland (2023–2024)
• Digital Bamboo, Time Space Existence Exhibition, Venice (2021), ZAZ Bellerive Museum, Zurich (2020–2021)
• Bespoke 3D printed joints, Swiss Sustainability Forum, Bern, Switzerland (2022)

Publications (Selected)

• Leschok Matthias*, Marirena Kladeftira*, Eftekhar Nik, and Benjamin Dillenburger. 2024. “Prōtóplasto” in Fabricate 2024, Copenhagen.

• Kladeftira, Marirena, Matthias Leschok, Eleni Skevani, Davide Tanadini, Patrick Ole Ohlbrock, Pierluigi D’Acunto, and Benjamin Dillenburger. 2022. "Digital Bamboo. A study on bamboo, 3D printed joints, and digitally fabricated building components for ultralight structures," in Hybrids & Haecceities - Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, ACADIA 2022, Philadelphia.

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