Kathy Velikov is an architect, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and a founding partner of RVTR. She currently serves on the BoD for ACADIA.
Geoffrey Thün is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Creative Practice at the University of Michigan Taubman College and a founding partner of RVTR. He was recently chair for the ACADIA 2016 conference.
RVTR’s work explores the agency of architecture and urban design within the context of dynamic ecological systems, infrastructures, energies, materially and technologically mediated environments, and emerging social organizations. Their body of work in responsive envelopes has been developing composite material systems that operate as thick, sensing skins that are integrated with sensing, intelligence, kinetic action, and interaction capabilities. This work has been published in Leonardo, IJAC, JAE, eVolo, [bracket] Goes Soft, and featured in in Hypernatural: Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature by Blaine Brownell and Marc Swackhamer, Paradigms in Computing by David Gerber and Mariana Ibanez, Performative Materials in Architecture by Rashida Ng and Sneha Patel, and High Performance Homes by Franca Trubiano. Most recently, their “Infundibuliforms: Kinetic Tensile Surface Environments” project received a 2016 R+D Awards honorable mention from Architect Magazine. Velikov and Thün also undertake work at the urban scale of infrastructures, territories, and urban networks. They have recently co-authored Infra Eco Logi Urbanism (Park Books, 2015), and were collaborators on EXTRACTION, the Canadian Pavilion exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.
