Lauren Vasey & Maria Yablonina
Lauren Vasey is a Research Associate at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) at The University of Stuttgart, where she teaches seminars and studios within the ITECH master’s program. Her teaching and research focuses on behavioral and adaptive robotic fabrication: considering in particular how sensor feedback, iterative computation, and robotic behaviors enable new types of production and challenge typical file- to-factory conventions. Her projects include several of the ICD/ ITKE Research Pavilions and have been internationally recognized and published in Dezeen, Wired, Architectural Design, among others. Previously, she received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Tufts University, cum laude, and a Masters of Architecture from the University of Michigan with distinction. She has taught workshops at RobArch and Acadia, and has lectured at venues including ACM Siggraph, and the European Space Agency. Since October 2016, Lauren is also an elected member of the Board of Directors of Acadia, the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture in North America, and a current editor of IJAC: The International Journal for Architectural Computing.
Maria Yablonina is an artist, researcher and designer working in the field of robotic fabrication with a focus on custom, task specific machines for making. Currently Maria is a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) at the University of Stuttgart. Maria’s research focus is in the area of Robotic Fabrication and Computational Design in Architecture. In particular, she works with bespoke tools, robots and methods designed to perform fabrication tasks in an on-site environment. In her work she argues that in the field of digital fabrication designers and researchers need to look beyond existing machines and start inventing their own architecture-specific custom robotic tools for construction and fabrication tasks. Maria’s work includes development of hardware and software solutions as well as complementing material systems intended to extend the existing catalogue of methods towards addressing the inherent scale, cost and barrier of entry limitations of conventional robotic fabrication processes.