Theodora Vardouli

Theodora Vardouli researches design and architecture’s entwining with digital technologies and computation. She is an Associate Professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University where she directs the Computational Design Exploratory (CoDEx). Before joining McGill University, Vardouli completed a PhD in Design and Computation from the MIT Department of Architecture. She is an External Examiner for two graduate programs at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and a member of the editorial board for the journal Technology, Architecture + Design (TAD).

Vardouli’s research examines histories, cultural meanings, and operational implications of algorithmic techniques for architectural design through a combination of historical inquiry and critical design and making. She is the author of Graph Vision: Digital Architecture’s Skeletons (MIT Press, 2024), a book examining architecture’s relationship with mathematics and computation in the first postwar decades with focus on the material and symbolic prevalence of graphs. She is co-editor, with Olga Touloumi, of Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground (Routledge, 2020) and, with Daniel Cardoso Llach, of Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design (Applied Research and Design Publishing, 2023) – a book based on the eponymous exhibition curated by Cardoso Llach (Pittsburgh 2017) and expanded in collaboration with Vardouli for Canada (Montreal 2021). Along with Cardoso Llach, Vardouli co-founded Lattice Space, a platform for critical and creative research at the nexus of design and computation. For a list of publications, see here.

Vardouli’s scholarship has been recognized with the 2022 Best Paper Award by the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) and the 2022 Mahoney Prize, for an article co-authored with David Theodore, by the Special Interest Group for Computing Information and Society (SIGCIS). Her research has received support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture. Vardouli is also an Onassis, A.G. Leventis, and Fulbright Foundation scholar.