Exposing Yourself to New Circumstances / Nicolas Turchi

The Archiologist

Nicolas Turchi is a designer currently working at Zaha Hadid Architects and a Digital Futures PhD scholar at Tongji University. Nicholas holds a Master in Architecture II from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Bologna and University of West of England. He has worked for several firms including Eisenman Architect, Xefirotarch, Mario Cucinella Architects and 5+1AA. Nicolas is particularly interested in emergent technologies and how they affect the theoretical aspect of the discipline. He has also been studying the relationship between architecture and philosophy and graduated with a thesis on Time and Space in architecture, influenced by the thought of Henri Bergson and Edmund Husserl.

For today’s episode we will be talking to Nicolas Turchi about why it is so important for him to expose himself to new circumstances, new cultures, new places, new ideologies, new everything in order to stay ahead. We talk about his different backgrounds, from Italy, to London, to the United States, and to London again… We talk about why he loves working at Zaha Hadid Architects, and he gives us some insights into his thesis project and life long obsession, time and architecture and specifically why he believes that architects must bring something from outside of the discipline, to have a more well-rounded profession. We also talk at great lengths about how parametricism is becoming a new norm, but how we as designers should always stay above that term, and not let the computer design for us nor have parametric designs for the sake of being innovative, but using parametric workflows to be more efficient and have better performance. Really interesting conversation, I am really excited about it, hope you all enjoy! Let the talk begin...