Emek Erdolu

Visiting Assistant Professor—Architecture and Computation Fellow

Emek Erdolu is a Visiting Assistant Professor and the Architecture and Computation Fellow at Tulane School of Architecture. Situated across design computation, human-computer interaction, and robotics, Emek’s research
includes two main strands: one that focuses on building computational tools to support building design and construction practices, research, and education; and the other on the questions of computation, representation, and work within the histories of and current practice in the field. Conducted at the Computational Design program in Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), his Ph.D. research focused on AI/robotic systems we work with every day, and involved qualitative and computational methods for data-enabled understandings of these systems’ design, use, and effects on design and construction work.

Emek’s recently published dissertation investigated how technology designers have conceptualized and analyzed the work of laborers to inform robotic systems, and how these systems reconfigure the organization of tasks with new workflows and human-machine interactions they introduce to construction sites, focusing on a selection of historical and contemporary robotics practices in the United States. Part of this research and more have been co/published in Springer Construction Robotics journal, the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI) journal, the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), and presented in venues such as the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).

Prior to Tulane, Emek was an instructor at CMU, where he taught at the School’s Master of Architecture (M.Arch) and Master of Science in Computational Design (MSCD) programs throughout his Ph.D.. Previously, he was a researcher at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), and for seven years in the United States, China, and Southeast Asia, he worked in various projects with AECOM, HMD, Ecoland, and Nomad Studio. He has lectured and/or taught studios in University of Pennsylvania, CMU, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), National University of Singapore (NUS), and Bilkent University.