DESIGN x TECH x CULTURE
Andrew Witt is an Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, teaching and researching on the relationship of geometry and machines to perception, design, assembly, and culture. He is also co-founder, with Tobias Nolte, of Certain Measures, a design and technology studio that prototypes the future. Trained in both architecture and mathematics, Witt has a particular interest in a technically synthetic and logically rigorous approach to form.
At Harvard, Witt teaches in the Architecture and Design Engineering programs. He has taught classes on neural urbanism, complex geometry, machine vision, domestic futures, and the relationship of science and design.
At Certain Measures, Witt designs spaces, experiences, products, and software for forward-thinking clients across industries. Their clients include Audi, BMW, SBB (Swiss Federal Rail), and the Dubai Futures Foundation. The work of Certain Measures is in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, and has been exhibited at the Pompidou, the Barbican Centre, Futurium (the German federal museum of the future), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Le Laboratoire, among others.
Books & Papers
Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2021), an investigation of mathematics as it has been drawn, encoded, imagined, and interpreted by architects.
Light Harmonies (Hatje Cantz, 2014), the first book devoted to the Rhythmograms of German proto-computational photographic hacker Heinrich Heidersberger.
A Machine Epistemology in Architecture, a study of the instruments for drawing complex curves and their influence on the knowledge culture of architecture.
Design Hacking: the Machinery of Visual Combinatorics, a sequel to A Machine Epistemology, which examines automated but not-quite computational methods of form generation.
Feral Autonomies, a reflection on the animal-like qualities of autonomous machines and how they will reconfigure the social space of design.
Grayboxing, which considers architectural knowledge as reconfigrable componentware, with neural networks as a prime example.
Cartogrammic Metamorphologies, or, Enter the Rowebot, which proposes a morphological map for all of architecture.
Witt’s research, which encompasses geometric, cultural, and historical elements, has been published in venues such as Log, e-flux, Project, AD, Detail, Harvard Design Magazine, FAZ Quarterly, Surface, Space, Linear Algebra and its Applications, and Linear and Multilinear Algebra, and Issues in Science and Technology.
Awards
Witt is a fellow of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, a Macdowell Fellow, a Graham Foundation grantee, a World Frontiers Forum Pioneer (2018) and Young Pioneer (2017), and a 2015 nominee for the Chernikov Prize. His personal work has been featured at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. In 2017 Certain Measures were finalists for the Zumtobel Award in both the Young Professionals and Applied Innovation Categories.Witt has lectured widely, including at the Venice Biennale, Library of Congress, Yale, Princeton, MIT, The Bartlett, The Berlage, Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, ETH, and EPFL.
He was previously Director of Research at Gehry Technologies and a director at GT’s Paris, France office, where he solved complex geometric challenges for clients including Gehry Partners, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, UN Studio, and Coop Himmelb(l)au, for projects such as the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Louvre Abu Dhabi, and Qatar National Museum. He also developed prototypes for new software design tools such as GTeam (now Trimble Connect, acquired by Trimble in 2014).
Education
Witt received an M.Arch (with distinction, AIA medal, John E. Thayer Scholarship, Frederick Shelden Travelling Fellowship) and an M.Des (History and Theory, with distinction) from the GSD. He has an Erdős number of 3.