Dr. Matias del Campo is a registered architect, designer, and educator. He is an Associate Professor at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, director of the AR2IL – The Architecture and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at UoM, and affiliate faculty member of Michigan Robotics. He conducts research on advanced design methods in architecture, primarily through the application of Artificial Intelligence; collaborating with Michigan Robotics and the Computer Science department. Matias del Campo is the co-founder of the architecture practice SPAN. The award-winning architectural designs are informed by advanced geometry, computational methodologies, and philosophical inquiry. SPAN gained wide recognition for the design of the Austrian Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and more recently, for the Robot Garden at the Ford Robotics Building. SPAN’s work was featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012 and 2021; ArchiLab 2013, and the Architecture Biennale in Vienna and Buenos Aires in 2019. Solo shows include “Formations,” at the MAK in Vienna and the exhibition "Sublime Bodies" at the Fab Union Gallery in Shanghai, China. Matias del Campo was awarded the Accelerate@CERN fellowship, the AIA Studio Prize, and was elected to the boards of directors of ACADIA and IJAC the International Journal of Architectural Computing. In 2016 and 2020 Matias del Campo co-chaired the ACADIA conference as well as chairing the 2020 DigitalFUTURES edition. SPAN’s work is in the permanent collection of the FRAC, the MAK in Vienna, the Benetton Collection, the Albertina, the Pinakothek Munich, and several private collections.
His publishing work includes two editions of AD - Evoking through Design and Machine Hallucinations (co-edited with Neil Leach) as well as the books Neural Architecture – Design and Artificial Intelligence (ORO Editions 2022) and Sublime Bodies (co-authored with Sandra Manninger, Tongji Press 2017)
In 2013 the practice expanded its operations to Shanghai, China, where the practice is currently working on building projects of various scales. He earned his Master of Architecture from the University of Applied Arts Vienna and his Ph.D. from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
