LightVault – project in collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Form Finding Lab Princeton, (with support of Glass and Transparency Research Group at TU Delft, Universidad de Alcalá, the Timbrel Vault Workshop, Global Robots, and Poesia Glass). Image credits: Shenhan Zhu.ARC574 Student Project – Catherine Ahn, Piao Liu, and Lisa Ramsburg.LightVault – project in collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Form Finding Lab Princeton, (with support of Glass and Transparency Research Group at TU Delft, Universidad de Alcalá, the Timbrel Vault Workshop, Global Robots, and Poesia Glass). Image credits: Shenhan Zhu.ARC574 Student Project – Catherine Ahn, Piao Liu, and Lisa Ramsburg.LightVault – project in collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Form Finding Lab Princeton, (with support of Glass and Transparency Research Group at TU Delft, Universidad de Alcalá, the Timbrel Vault Workshop, Global Robots, and Poesia Glass). Image credits: Shenhan Zhu.ARC574 Student Project – Melissa Barstow and Jonah Coe Scharff.LightVault – project in collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Form Finding Lab Princeton, (with support of Glass and Transparency Research Group at TU Delft, Universidad de Alcalá, the Timbrel Vault Workshop, Global Robots, and Poesia Glass). Image credits: Isla Han and Edvard Bruun.LightVault – project in collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Form Finding Lab Princeton, (with support of Glass and Transparency Research Group at TU Delft, Universidad de Alcalá, the Timbrel Vault Workshop, Global Robots, and Poesia Glass). Image credits: Isla Han and Edvard Bruun.LightVault – project in collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Form Finding Lab Princeton, (with support of Glass and Transparency Research Group at TU Delft, Universidad de Alcalá, the Timbrel Vault Workshop, Global Robots, and Poesia Glass). Image credits: Maciej Grzeskowiak.
⚠ About ⚠
CREATE Laboratory Princeton explores computation as design generation.
Showcasing scientific research and the rigour that it requires. With a playful and accessible approach to technical topics, such as programming and robotics, CREATE Laboratory Princeton strives to break down the barriers for novices to enter the field.
Emphasizing and supporting the significant contributions of women in technology, as well as collaboration, open data, and open science, CREATE Laboratory Princeton seeks to redefine innovation: away from conventional mentalities, and towards one that embraces collaboration, building up on current knowledge.
It is truly experimental, including the acknowledging and embracing the failures that inevitably accompany experimentation.
⚠ News ⚠
The LightVault was awarded the Architect Magazine R+D award! Congrats to Isla Han, Edvard Bruun and Stefana Parascho for making this unique collaborative project happen.
🏆 💎 🏆
We are teaching a workshop at this year’s ACADIA conference together with Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich: Controlling robots remotely through COMPAS FAB. Join us by registering here!! 🤖 👩 💻
Stefana Parascho is the Director of CREATE Laboratory Princeton.
Stefana studied in Stuttgart and received her Doctorate degree from ETH Zurich, Gramazio Kohler Research. Since February 2019 she is Assistant Professor in Princeton and makes sure that the robots and students in the lab don’t get bored. 💃 🤖 🕺 When she’s not in the lab, she is probably in a dance class or travelling (except during pandemics). She fights to see more recognition for women in STEM fields and hopes to never get stuck on a fixed research idea.
Isla Xi Han
📸 Shenhan Zhu
PhD student
Isla is a PhD student in Architecture (Technology Track) at Princeton University. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture and Economics from UVa and her professional Master’s Degree in Architecture from Princeton. 🍀 She’s very lucky and proud to be the very first member recruited into the CREATE Laboratory Princeton - firstly through Assistantship in Instruction for Stefana‘s course, then hired as Research Specialist II for the LightVault Project, and now as a PhD student in the lab.
When she’s not around robots 🤖, she enjoys brainstorming and collaborating with friends across disciplines for all sorts of playful projects (music, e-textile, ML and app development … you name it). She would love to better include robots as a flexible and robust collaborator 🤝 with human teams in architectural design and construction settings in the near future. ✨
Projects: LightVault, Robotoddler
Teaching: ARC574
Rafael Pastrana
📸 Andrei Jipa
PhD student
Rafael is a Ph.D. student at the CREATE Laboratory Princeton. He holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication from ETH Zurich. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, he received a Bachelor's Degree with Honors in Civil Engineering from Technologico de Monterrey.
Professionally, Rafael worked for over three years at Bollinger Grohmann, mostly doing Karamba3d stuff. He spent his days at the Block Research Group (ETH Zurich) developing a COMPAS package to fabricate one of the full-scale prototypes of the funicular slabs of the NEST HiLo, and his nights at Gramazio Kohler Research training deep learning models.
As the first Ph.D. pupil of CREATE Laboratory Princeton, Rafael explores the nebular space between modern structural design, architecture, and design computation. When he is not in front of a computer, he builds brick-and-mortar houses in Southern Mexico.
Ian Ting
MArch Student
Ian Ting is a Master of Architecture student at Princeton School of Architecture and a research assistant in CREATE Laboratory Princeton. He has a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan where he developed an interest in dabbling in a bit of everything, and his projects have been supported by various interdepartmental grants and fellowships.
When he’s not contributing to the eventual domination by our robotic overlords 🤖, he likes reading stories and making things by hand 🙌.
