Duks Koschitz

Duks Koschitz, PhD, is Professor of Design & Technology at Pratt Institute and has been a full time faculty member since 2013 teaching undergraduate and graduate courses.

Director of the d.r.a. Lab (center for design research at Pratt), The d.r.a. Lab advances knowledge that correlates topics in geometry and material science to manufacturing processes in 2D to provide sustainable building solutions. When geometric principles are tied to advanced fabrication we can transform sheet goods into high-performance building systems. Our innovative projects use technology to improve materials and building systems economically, sustainably, and equitably. The interdisciplinary work has a strong focus on making and is always deeply tied to pedagogical initiatives. The d.r.a. Lab addresses the critical need for advanced, experience-based learning by challenging students to design and build full-scale prototypes while inventing new building systems.

Studio Teaching & Coordination Duks developed an approach to teaching the first year studios in the School of Architecture at Pratt, which teaches visual thinking in a structured way. The syllabi guide students through several exercises that focus on concepts in visual thinking and shape grammars. Regarding advanced studios Duks has developed a teaching approach that encompasses specific topics in geometry and structural systems that get tested via full-scale student built projects. Some of the studios expand on his dissertation and use curved-crease paperfolding.

Reserach Projects Duks wrote his dissertation on the Curved-crease Paperfolding work of David Huffman, the well known computer scientist who invented loss-less compression. Duks has since developed several ways to teach and work with curved folds and continues to investigate this underexplored topic in geometry.
Duks developed ‘Beetle Blocks’ with Eric Rosenbaum and Bernat Romagosa, a software to teach algorithmic thinking to generate forms. He has held several research positions at M.I.T. and has evaluated and documented all of Heinz Isler’s models for the Heinz Isler Archiv at the ETH in Zurich in 2011.

Professional Work Duks has been working as a designer and architect since 2007. Prior to that he co-founded sparc, a design and research collaborative in with three colleagues at M.I.T. The practice has won the first prize of London 2008, an ideas competition for the River Thames Gallery and the first prize of the Gillette Sculpture Competition in Boston in 2010.
From 2000 to 2007, Duks was the lead designer at NMDA for all of the office’s built projects. The coauthored projects have won national and local AIA awards, and the last project Duks was in charge of, H.L.23 in New York, was also exhibited at MOCA in Los Angeles in 2007. In 1999, he worked with Nader Tehrani and Monica Ponce de Leon, and was the project architect for Mantra in Boston. Prior to working at Office da, he worked at Morphosis, Eric O. Moss, Asymptote, Coop Himmelblau, and Ian Ritchie Architects.

Ph.D., Design & Computation, M.I.T, Cambridge, MA
Dipl. Ing., Technische Universitaet Wien