Abbas Ghaffari

Digital Fabrication Labs Manager

Abbas Ghaffari is a computational designer, educator, and maker whose work spans architecture and fashion. As Digital Fabrication Labs Manager at Tulane University's School of Architecture and Built Environment, he works across the Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL), Digital Ceramic Lab, and Textile Lab, supporting students and faculty as they develop ideas through computational design, material experimentation, and hands-on fabrication.

Much of his research asks how geometric systems rooted in cultural-architectural tradition, particularly muqarnas, can be reinterpreted through generative design, recursive symmetry, and computational form-finding, producing new forms while carrying forward the logic embedded in their architectural origins. One strand of this work translates muqarnas geometry into wearable structures, using the same generative rules that shape a ceiling or a vault to shape something worn on the body. Working across scales, he examines how that geometry shifts once it has to answer to the body, to material behavior, and to fabrication constraints.

He is also beginning to explore robotic craft and biomaterials (bio-gel mixed of chitosan and cellulose), asking how material behavior can inform computational design and fabrication. This emerging work builds on his interest in the relationship between geometry, making, and the possibilities that new materials and tools open up.

Abbas holds two master's degrees in architecture, from Tulane University (2026) and the University of Tehran (2013) and brings nearly a decade of experience in architectural practice and teaching. In the labs, he helps students take geometric ideas off the screen and turn them into physical work they can build, test, and refine.