2018 Richard Rogers Fellowship Winners. Harvard Graduate School of Design

Alexis Kalagas was born in Sydney, Kalagas is a writer and urban strategist currently based in Zürich, Switzerland. Most recently, he spent four years at the interdisciplinary design practice Urban-Think Tank, working on a range of research, design, exhibition, and media projects focused on housing and inclusive urban development in Europe, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, following graduate studies in Geneva and Boston, he was involved in an early stage print and digital media start-up dedicated to in-depth coverage of international affairs and global policy. He began his career in Canberra, Australia, serving as a foreign policy advisor with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Kalagas co-edited the book Reactivate Athens (Ruby Press, 2017), and has guest edited three issues of SLUM Lab magazine. His writing on cities and urban design has appeared in numerous publications, including Architectural Design (AD), Perspecta, trans, Migrant Journal, a+t, the Journal of Visual Culture, and Harvard Design Magazine, as well as the edited volumes CARTHA on Making Heimat (Park Books, 2017) and Re-Living the City: UABB 2015 (Actar, 2016). He has also taught at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

A decade on from the subprime crisis, Kalagas notes, cities worldwide are again contending with risky housing bubbles. During the fellowship, Kalagas intends to explore how alternative models of affordable housing could be adapted and scaled in places like London that are reckoning with this acute challenge. In particular, Kalagas is interested in whether non-speculative, rental-based developments could succeed in cities shaped by a persistent dream of homeownership, and take root in an overheated property market.

Kaz Yoneda is the principal and founder of bureau 0-1, a practice for architecture, urbanism, and research based in Tokyo. Born in Seattle and raised in California, Kaz went on to receive a BArch with Honors from the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. After a two-year collaboration with Sou Fujimoto, he attended Harvard GSD and received his MArch II with Honors in 2011. Thereafter, he was appointed to run Harvard GSD’s Studio Abroad with Toyo Ito in Tokyo. After serving as an director of space design for takram design engineering from 2011 to 2014, Yoneda launched bureau 0-1. Currently, he serves as an adjunct assistant professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Keio University, as well as a visiting lecturer at Japan Women’s University. He has previously taught at Cornell University and Nihon University College of Fine Arts, and has lectured at various institutions. In 2017, he began the Praxis Lecture series with A+U and currently serves as its advisor. His interviews and written pieces have been published in Shinkenchiku, GA Japan 138, The Architectural Review, Redshift, and Built. His works have been exhibited at dOCUMENTA 13, SAIC Sullivan Gallery, and 21_21 Design Sight. Yoneda has contributed to or featured in WIRED, Motherboard, ICON, and Architecture Boston.

Yoneda’s Richard Rogers Fellowship research will focus on the design protocols of mega-scale developments, and “Tokyoism,” which he calls a projective manifesto for a city without one. His fellowship research takes a topical and critical look at the 2012 London Olympics, in comparison to Tokyo’s forthcoming 2020 Olympics, to conduct analyses of its transparent process, innovation, and design evaluation. It is the greater ambition of this project to imagine what Tokyo could have become if its enabling system endowed much of what should have been learned from London.

Peter Buš is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Chair of Information Architecture at ETH Zürich. In his research and teaching agenda he concentrates on the development of custom-based computational environments, design workflows and simulation strategies within the scope of Responsive Cities focusing on end-users’ perspective. This includes the development of cognitive design computing frameworks for urban and participatory design activities linked with current advancement in digital technologies. His contributions appeared in variety of conferences and events, including CAADRIA, eCAADe and CAAD Futures.

After he graduated with a Master of Arts in Architecture degree from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in Slovakia, he founded a design research platform Peter Buš | Architecture | Computational Design | Research, where he explores the usage of generative computer coding and advanced modelling techniques for architecture and urban environments. Prior to obtaining his PhD degree in Architecture Theory and Design from the Department of Architectural Modelling (MOLAB) at the Czech Technical University in Prague, he gained experience as a practicing architect and as a researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory SEC in Singapore.

Through the Richard Rogers Fellowship, Peter will investigate potentialities of computation, digital fabrication methods, and prototyping practices for their applications of construction deliveries in large-scale urban contexts and their capacities to respond to citizens’ necessities. Within this scope, the research aims to reveal, examine, and define to what extent the return of workshop models through digital making is capable to deal with large quantities of bespoke productions, considering the current advancements in a building industry and fabrication technologies as well as a position of citizens in on-site participation.

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Peter Buš es investigador postdoctoral y profesor de la Cátedra de Arquitectura de la Información en ETH Zürich. En su agenda de investigación y docencia, se concentra en el desarrollo de entornos computacionales personalizados, flujos de trabajo de diseño y estrategias de simulación dentro del ámbito de las ciudades receptivas que se centran en la perspectiva de los usuarios finales. Esto incluye el desarrollo de marcos informáticos de diseño cognitivo para actividades de diseño urbano y participativo vinculadas con el avance actual en tecnologías digitales. Sus contribuciones aparecieron en una variedad de conferencias y eventos, incluyendo CAADRIA, eCAADe y CAAD Futures.

Después de graduarse con un Máster en Arquitectura en la Academia de Bellas Artes y Diseño de Bratislava en Eslovaquia, fundó una plataforma de investigación de diseño Peter Buš | Arquitectura | Diseño Computacional | Investigación, donde explora el uso de la codificación generativa de computadora y técnicas avanzadas de modelado para arquitectura y entornos urbanos. Antes de obtener su doctorado en Teoría y Diseño de Arquitectura en el Departamento de Modelado Arquitectónico (MOLAB) en la Universidad Técnica Checa de Praga, ganó experiencia como arquitecto en ejercicio e investigador en Future Cities Laboratory SEC en Singapur.

A través de la Beca Richard Rogers, Peter investigará las potencialidades de computación, métodos de fabricación digital y prácticas de creación de prototipos para sus aplicaciones de entregas de construcción en contextos urbanos a gran escala y sus capacidades para responder a las necesidades de los ciudadanos. Dentro de este alcance, la investigación busca revelar, examinar y definir en qué medida el retorno de los modelos de taller a través de la fabricación digital es capaz de manejar grandes cantidades de producciones a medida, considerando los avances actuales en una industria de la construcción y tecnologías de fabricación, así como una posición de los ciudadanos en la participación en el sitio.

Cathy Smith is an Australian architect, interior designer, and academic. With professional and research qualifications and experience in architecture and interior design along with a PhD in architectural theory and history, Smith operates at the theory-practice nexus. She is particularly interested in issues of equity and social agency in the built environment, and her own practice is focused on small scale, low-budget, and temporary DIY (Do It Yourself) installations. As an academic, she has taught in the subject areas of design, history, and theory and construction at several Australian universities, including the University of Newcastle (current), the University of Queensland, and the Queensland University of Technology. She is also the inaugural Turnbull Foundation Women in the Built Environment scholar at the University of New South Wales (2018-2020). Her scholarly research appears in a number of international journals including Australian Feminist Studies, Architectural Histories, Interstices, Architectural Theory Review, and IDEA. In parallel with her recent research on the temporary occupation of vacant commercial buildings by artists and artisans, she participated in the Renew Newcastle property guardianship scheme, which ignited her interest in the benefits and challenges of the phenomenon more broadly.

Smith’s interdisciplinary research will develop an ethical and theoretical framework for engaging with the emergent phenomenon of London “property guardianship,” a term used to describe the sanctioned, temporary occupation of vacant commercial and residential buildings in Europe, North America and Australia. This research will focus on the stakeholder experiences of the London “model” of property guardianship by situating them in a broader international and critical scholarly context.

Aleksandr Bierig is a PhD candidate studying architectural and urban history at the Harvard GSD. His research focuses on the intersection of architecture, economy, and environment, particularly between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries in Britain and its empire. This work is concerned with how it came to pass that buildings began to be conceived environmentally—that is, as an interior space of often purified comfort set apart from the threatening vicissitudes of the external world, as well as an instrument that might serve to manage environmental, economic, and social risks. His dissertation investigates the interaction between coal use and architecture in London between the Great Fire of 1666 and the construction of the second London Coal Exchange in 1849. Other recent work includes investigations into the late eighteenth-century English cottage, the early nineteenth-century plantation in the American south, and changing concepts of building ventilation between 1650 and 1850. Prior to his PhD studies, Bierig completed his MArch from Princeton University and his BA in Architecture from Yale University. He has worked for a number of architectural firms in the United States and Europe, and has published articles and essays in Log, Clog, Architectural Record, The Architectural Review, and Pidgin.

During the Richard Rogers Fellowship, Bierig will be advancing his dissertation research, exploring the architectural, infrastructural, and commercial regulations of the eighteenth-century coal trade, including documentation on coal taxation, records of debates on the London Coal Trade, and designs for metropolitan improvements. This work will take place at several archives and institutions, including the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives, and the British Museum.