Associate Director, CASE

Director, Built Ecologies MS & Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, RPI

Alexandros Tsamis is an architect and assistant professor at the School of Architecture, RPI. He currently serves as the Graduate Program Director of the Built Ecologies MS & Ph.D. programs and the Associate Director of CASE. He earned his Ph.D. in Architecture, Design and Computation and Master of Science (SMArchS) in Design and Building Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Previously, he served as the Post-professional Graduate Program Director in Design at Adolfo Ibanez University in Chile and has taught at MIT and the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University.

With a working definition for the built environment as the Effective Distribution of Material, Energy and Information in Space for Socio-Natural Affect, Tsamis works at the intersection of design and the architectural sciences. He focuses on next-generation composite materials, climate-adaptive and cyber-physical energy systems, and advanced manufacturing technologies as they relate to advances in computation. He investigates issues associated with Material, Energy and Information ecologies of the built environment at scales that range from that of the object to that of the territory. His research work has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences. Tsamis has design/technology patents for innovation in materials. His design work has received several awards in international architectural competitions including first prize at the international architecture competition, “London Architecture Gallery,” first prize in the international design competition, “Gillette Landmark,” and in the "Design of Ephemeral Structures" competition for the Athens Olympics. His design and theoretical work has been published internationally including Architectural Design, the Journal of Architectural Historians, Thresholds, Pidgin, 306090, and Architecture in Formation and has been exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Design in Barcelona, the biennale of Venice, the biennale of architecture in Chile, the biennale of architecture in China, RIBA London and the Byzantine Museum of Greece.

PhD Dissertation: Tsamis. A. (2012).  Software Tectonics. Thesis (Ph. D. in Design and Computation)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012.

SMArchS Thesis: Tsamis. A. (2004). Digital graft : towards a non-homogeneous materiality. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2004.