Theodora Vardouli
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​Theodora Vardouli is Assistant Professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University. Her research broadly examines algorithmic techniques of describing, generating, and simulating architectural form and performance -- their histories, cultural meanings, and operational implications for creative design. Her recent scholarship has revolved around processes of mathematization that preceded, and paralleled, the introduction of computers to architectural design, along with knowledge cultures of the settings in which these unfolded. Current research projects include investigation of activity in design methodology and its intersections with computer aided design research in postwar North America, genealogies of formalism in the interface of architecture and mathematics, and histories of dynamic modeling in postwar British architectural theory. Alongside these critical historical projects, Vardouliinvestigates, through teaching, collisions between perceptual shape, material things, and structural abstraction while designing and making with digital tools. Vardouli's articles have been published in Leonardo, Design Studies, and several edited collections. She is co-curator of the forthcoming exhibition Vers Une Imagination Numérique (UQAM, 2020) and co-editor of Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground, 1945-1980 (Routledge, forthcoming 2019) a collection of essays by scholars of design, media, and technology probing keywords that catalyzed dialogues among architects, engineers, and mathematicians in the postwar. Before McGill, Vardouli was Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt and Lecturer at the Boston Architectural College. Vardouli holds a PhD and a SMArchS in Design and Computation from MIT, where she was Presidential Fellow, and a Master of Science in Design-Space-Culture from the National Technical University of Athens, where she also completed her first architectural training leading to her MArch. Vardouli's research has been supported from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Onassis Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation.