Simon Kim

Biography

M. Arch, AA School of Architecture, London
S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Simon Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, and a Registered Architect. With Mariana Ibanez, he is a principal of I|K studio, a multi-nodal design and architecture agency. After graduating from the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association, he was a designer and project architect for the Office of Zaha Hadid, and a consultant to Gehry Technologies. Simon has taught studios and workshops at MIT, Yale University, and the AA.

Simon's recent research has been an engagement with electronic devices, dynamic environments and urban space as a continually mediated and perceptual frame. His post-graduate work at MIT was on cybernetics, machines, architecture, and their translated design experiences through interfaces. Simon has presented his research at conferences on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, and Cybernetic Science and Systems Research.

I|K studio works at various scales and across disciplines from wearable computing in a clothing/cladding system exhibited at the Museum of Science in Boston and at Milan Fashion Week, interactive environments at Harvard University, a tactile interactive device for 3d navigation displayed at CSAIL, to a retrofit of a former automotive factory for an artist studio in Regent’s Park, and a salon in Knightsbridge. The practice is currently building a villa in Inner Mongolia, a tensile membrane installation for the National Art Museum of China, and a pavilion in Lexington, Massachusetts.