Portrait
Cristiano Ceccato AADipl MSc(CS) DIC MIEEE FRSA Cristiano Ceccato an Associate at Zaha Hadid Architects in London. His work entails a range of management, design and technology leadership responsibilities, leading large-scale public and private projects. Professional focus includes technical team management, design and development of building infrastructure, systems and cladding, including geometric rationalization and constructability resolution of structural and envelope systems; Project governance and cost control through the introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM) systems and associated practice methodologies across the firm. Cristiano was a co-founder and Director of Research & Consulting of Gehry Technologies, where he was responsible for professional consulting services and technology transfer. At Gehry Partners he was responsible for the development and application of parametric design tools and integrated modeling principles, and associated digital construction methods, on a wide range of design projects at all stages of development. In addition to Frank Gehry projects, Cristiano worked on a wide range of external projects through Gehry Technologies, most recently the Swire One Island East Tower in Hong Kong and the 2008 Olympic Stadium in Beijing with Herzog & de Meuron and ARUP, as well as cross-disciplinary research with Boeing. Cristiano trained as an architect and computer scientist, and specializes in the development of design solutions for complex forms using parametric technologies and computer programming, supporting computational design tools and associated fabrication methods. Cristiano has practiced architecture in Europe, Asia and the US. He has lectured widely on the subject of computational rule-based design systems and parametric form finding in digital building processes. He has held academic faculty positions in London, Milan, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Australia, where he is currently a Visiting Professor of Architecture at QUT. He received his professional Diploma in Architecture degree from the Architectural Association (1996) and an MS in Computer Science from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London (1997). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK) in 2004. Awards & Selected Academic Appointments: 1997 Lecturer in Design Computation, Architectural Association, London 1999 Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic University 2000 Adjunct Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Italy 2004 Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK 2009 Visiting Professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. LARS HESSELGREN, AA Dip, RIBA, MSc (UCL) Senior Associate Partner, Director PLP Research Lars Hesselgren is the Director of PLP Research and a Senior Associate Partner at PLP since October 2007. Previous to that he occupied the same position at KPF and before 2005 he was the IT Director at KPF London. In 2002 he received the Bentley Lifetime Achievement Award He is an architect with thirty-five years of experience; for the last twenty-five years he has worked with and managed Computer Aided Design systems. His most recent work concentrates on parametric modelling in CAD. He helped create the new Computational Geometry group within KPF and advises on visualisation and IT matters. He is head of the Computational Design Group at PLP which is developing novel tools and techniques within the parametric design paradigm. He is establishing new R&D programmes with University partners and other bodies. At Kohn Pedersen Fox International he was been responsible for the CAD and other computer systems since their installation in 1991, when he joined the practice. His involvement with the IT environment rendered him uniquely experienced to contribute to all KPF's design efforts. His experience includes all types of buildings, including offices. He is a highly accomplished 3D computer user. During his time at KPF he was responsible for the growth of the CAD system from 2 Uni
