EMTECH STUDIO [AA School of Architecture]

We are pleased to announce the next EmTech Master Class lecture by

Brodie Neill is a Tasmanian-born designer based in London, whose work spans collectible design, public art, and material innovation. He studied furniture design at the University of Tasmania before completing a Master of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where computational design shaped his design approach. Over the past two decades, Neill has developed an internationally recognised practice exploring the relationship between advanced manufacturing, craftsmanship, and circular design, including pioneering work with reclaimed ocean plastic. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the London Design Biennale, National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Frieze Gallery London, Sotheby’s London, and AMA Collection in Venice. His Alpha and Cowrie chairs for Made in Ratio were featured in Taschen’s 1000 Chairs, while his @ Chair was recognised in TIME magazine’s The Design 100. In 2025, he undertook the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Artist-at-Sea residency in Antarctica and unveiled Opal, a six-metre patinated bronze sculptural seat for One Leadenhall, City of London.

Lecture title:
Design Frontiers

This lecture traces Brodie Neill’s journey from studying in Tasmania to establishing an internationally recognised London-based practice working across design, public art, and circular design innovation. Focusing on the role of thinking, digital fabrication, and -led making, the talk will explore how computational processes can inform material experimentation, craft, and production at multiple scales. Through key projects spanning furniture, sculpture, and public commissions, Neill will discuss the relationship between technology and making, alongside the environmental responsibilities shaping contemporary design practice. The lecture will also reflect on the evolution of his studio and the challenges of translating experimental methodologies into realised works.

The AA [EmTech] studio provides an intellectually rigorous environment for architects and researchers to engage with the intersection of advanced computational design, material science, and advanced fabrication technologies. Our curriculum operates across two symbiotic, high-level tracks: the integration of cutting-edge material systems and fabrication technologies, and the development of sophisticated computational design and software methodologies.

The research culture at [EmTech] is defined by a commitment to longevity and impact. We reject the notion that academic inquiry concludes with graduation; instead, our programme fosters a trajectory wherein graduated scholars continue to refine and advance the investigations initiated within our studio with an active collaboration with our faculty. This dedication to excellence is evidenced by the successful dissemination of our findings to the broader global scientific community through high-impact, peer-reviewed journals and international conferences.

We are proud to announce that our recent graduates have contributed five seminal papers to the proceedings of the 31st International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from April 26 to May 2, 2026.

These publications represent the direct culmination of their rigorous dissertation research developed within the [EmTech] studio. This accomplishment underscores the defining ethos of the [EmTech] programme: we are not merely a technology-oriented studio, but an active, collaborative hub of innovation. By consistently validating and publishing our research, we ensure that our intellectual contributions remain at the forefront of the field, actively shaping the future of architectural discourse alongside a global network of scholars and specialists.

We are pleased to announce the next EmTech Master Class lecture featuring Philipp Hoelzenbein and Moritz Rietschel co-founders of Raven AI.

Philipp studied Architecture at TU Munich and began his career as an architect before moving to the Boston Consulting Group, where he spent four years focusing on energy infrastructure and AI projects. Motivated by the gap between design intent, digital capability and fabrication, Philipp started to rethink how AI can augment creativity in architecture and design. Moritz's work builds on research at UC Berkeley from early 2024, bringing early LLMs into CAD as AI-collaborative tools with Prof. Kyle Steinfeld and robotic fabrication with Prof. Simon Schleicher. Moritz has lectured internationally on AI-based creative tools, published at ACADIA and the IJAC journal, hosted workshops at MIT and Tongji and contributed to international research conferences.

Lecture Title:
AI power directly in Rhino/Grasshopper

This 90-minute Raven Masterclass explores the future of architectural design by integrating AI as a collaborator within Rhino and Grasshopper. Rather than a simple product demo, the session demonstrates a new paradigm where conversational AI enhances parametric design, optimizes workflows, and allows designers to prototype at the speed of thought. Participants will learn to leverage AI for generating systems, managing legacy scripts, and building adaptive, agentic design environments that define the next generation of human-machine collaboration.

We are pleased to announce the next EmTech Master Class lecture featuring Renee Dobre from NBBJ Design.



Renee Dobre is a licensed Architect in the state of New York and NBBJ’s Firmwide Computation Team Leader. Following her relocation from the U.S. to London, she now acts as a conduit for international knowledge transfer within the UK studio. Renee holds a unique hybrid role, splitting her time between high-level digital strategy and active project delivery. This allows her to effectively bridge computational theory and practical application, providing a testing ground where she pioneers new workflows to enhance architectural design and delivery.

Lecture Title:
From Intuition to Instruction: Embedding Intelligence Across Architectural Process

Architecture has always negotiated between creative intuition and technical constraint, but the tools available to mediate that tension have changed dramatically. This lecture traces a practical, project-grounded journey through the computational and AI-driven workflows shaping contemporary practice today. Drawing on built and unbuilt work at NBBJ, Renee examines how computation, machine learning, VR/AR, and digital fabrication are not isolated specialisms but interconnected levers that - when applied strategically - reshape how design decisions are made, tested, and delivered. Rather than a speculative vision of architecture's future, this talk is rooted in the messiness of real projects: the constraints, the client conversations, the workflows that saved weeks, and the times physical fabrication logic formed a complete rethink. Renee also draws on her experience leading cross-disciplinary hackathons as a lens for rapid prototyping of both ideas and processes, exploring what happens when you collapse the distance between concept and consequence into 24 hours with no client brief to hide behind. The goal isn't to leave students with a toolkit. It's to provide them with a way of thinking: curious, adaptive, and convinced that the most interesting architectural intelligence lives right at the intersection of human judgment and computational possibility.

The AA [EmTech] studio has launched a new research initiative centered on composites, examining their design principles and construction methodologies. This encompasses an investigation into the effective design, fabrication, and utilization of their inherent properties for subsequent biowelding applications. This year, our focus is on -Based Composites, specifically the design and fabrication of a structure from this material to evaluate novel design and protocols within these material systems.

During this initial research phase, we are collaborating with the Life Fab Institute for the growth period of the Mycelium-Based Composites and their preliminary biowelding phase, aiming to cultivate large mycelium blocks. In the subsequent stages, we will employ the precision of robotic cutting to create the final components from the grown blocks for ultimate biowelding and assembly sequences at the AA .

We are pleased to announce the next EmTech Master Class lecture featuring Richard Beckett from Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

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Richard Beckett is an Associate Professor in Architecture at Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Richard's research operates at the intersection of computation, biofabrication, and microbial ecologies in the built environment. Internationally known for pioneering Probiotic Design, a radical architectural approach that advocates reintroducing “good” bacteria into buildings to foster healthier indoor microbiomes, this research was awarded the RIBA President’s Medal for Research in 2020. Beckett currently heads the Eng-EPSRC EFRI ELiS: Developing Probiotic Interventions to Reduce the Emergence and Persistence of Pathogens in Built Environments, in partnership with University California San Diego and Johns Hopkins University.

Lecture title:
Bioaugmented Design

Bioaugmented design explores how architecture can actively collaborate with living systems rather than simply accommodating them. The lecture presents research through design-led perspective on designing with microorganisms, materials science, and biotechnology to create biologically active buildings. Drawing on experimental projects and ongoing research the work examines how bioaugmented systems can enhance environmental performance, challenge conventional construction methods, and reshape the role of the architect. The lecture invites designers to rethink buildings as dynamic ecologies, structures that grow, decay, adapt, and participate in natural processes to address climate, material, and urban challenges.