Andrew Saunders
Associate Professor of Architecture
Director of the MSD-RAS Program
Chair of Admissions Committee
Profile
Andrew Saunders is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design and founding principal of Andrew Saunders Architecture + Design, an internationally published, award winning architecture, design and research practice committed to the tailoring of innovative digital methodologies to provoke novel exchange and reassessment of the broader cultural context. The practice innovates at a number of scales ranging from product design, exhibition design, and residential and large-scale civic and cultural institutional design.
He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arkansas and a Masters in Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His current practice and research interests lie in computational geometry as it relates to aesthetics, emerging technology, fabrication and performance. He has significant professional experience as project designer for Eisenman Architects, Leeser Architecture and Preston Scott Cohen, Inc.
He has taught and guest lectured at a variety of institutions, including Cooper Union and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and, most recently, he was Assistant Professor of Architecture & Head of Graduate Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.
In 2004 he was awarded the SOM Research and Traveling Fellowship for Masters of Architecture to pursue his research on the relationship of equation-based geometries to early 20th century pioneers in reinforced concrete. His current practice and research interests lie in computational geometry as it relates to emerging technology, fabrication and performance. He is currently working on a book using parametric modeling as an analysis tool of 17th century Italian Baroque architecture. Most recently Andrew won the ACADIA international fabrication competition for the production of the Luminescent Limacon. The design for this lighting fixture was inspired by Flemish baroque portraits of the Dutch ruff and builds on computational and material research from his seminar Equation-based Morphologies.
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