Expertise

Topics:  Advanced Manufacturing, Architecture, Energy, Sustainability, Computational Design

Industries: Research, Architecture and Planning, Education/Learning

Dana Cupkova is a Professor at Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture and the graduate Track Chair of the MS in Regenerative and Sustainable Design (MS-RSD) program. She directs EPIPHYTE Lab, a design and research collaborative that was recognized as the Next Progressives design practice by ARCHITECT Magazine in 2018. She is a recipient of the 2019 ACADIA Teaching Award of Excellence, the 2022 ACSA Creative Achievement, and a 2022-23 Fulbright US Scholar. Additionally, she is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC).

Dana’s design work is driven by a holistic vision of the built environment, centered on the relationship between ecology and technology, and the capacity of architecture to become ecologically vibrant. Her work seeks attunement with natural processes in pursuit of the aesthetics of ecological intimacy. By folding evidence-based methods into creative design solutions, Dana’s research emphasizes the interconnectedness of architecture and landscape through the study of circularity, thermodynamics, embodied energy, bio-based processes, and advanced manufacturing. She investigates strategies for remediation and decarbonization through the use of construction waste streams.

Media Experience

Epiphyte Lab creates architecture "with empathy to all species"  — Dezeen
Dana Cupkova, an associate professor at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, founded the firm in 2009 alongside her late collaborator Kevin Pratt, with the aim of creating architecture that "acts like an epiphyte".

Panel, Material Responsibility: Mollie Claypool, Dana Cupkova, and Achim Menges  — ArchDaily
Presentations from Mollie Claypool (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL), Dana Cupkova (Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture), and Achim Menges (University of Stuttgart Institute for Computational Design and Construction), will be followed by a panel discussion with Taubman College faculty.

Cardoso Llach Curates Computational Design Exhibition  — Carnegie Mellon University News
Specifically, the show illuminates the 20th Century emergence of new methods for design representation, simulation and manufacturing linked to digital computers' capacities for information processing and display, and reflects on their contemporary repercussions across architecture, art and design. Along with a selection of historical materials, works by 30 contemporary creators are displayed including Philip Beesley, Felicia Davis and Delia Dumitrescu, and Rafael Lozano Hemmer, as well as by CMU faculty including Dana Cupkova, Ramesh Krishnamurti, and Golan Levin. A team of the School of Architecture's Computational Design students, including Jinmo Rhee, Emek Erdolu, Erik Ulberg, Maria Vlachostergiou and Mali Tribune, contributed to the show's curation and design, and to the preparation of several interactive pieces on display in Montréal.