Daniel Tish

Daniel Tish is a designer and researcher whose work lies at the intersection of digital fabrication, material science, sustainability, and computation, investigating new design opportunities through the lens of bespoke materiality. Daniel’s research develops a new generation of carbon-negative biocomposites derived from microorganisms and methods for their robotic fabrication. He configures circular economies and technological solutions to address the high carbon footprint of architecture and the built environment. The research establishes multi-disciplinary collaborations with domain experts in material science and biology and operates between design and science to deliver this critical new material technology. Meanwhile, the work also challenges the ubiquity of industrialized materials in digital fabrication spaces. It creates fabrication methods to cater to the unpredictable nature of many biomaterials, dovetailing with the current research focus on cyber-physical systems in the computational design and fabrication community.

Daniel is a Lecturer in Architecture at the GSD and a Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed between the Materials Processes and Systems (MaP+S) group in the GSD and the Lewis Lab in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The Salata Institute, the Center for Green Buildings and Cities, and the Joint Center for Housing Studies have generously supported his research at Harvard. His work can be found in the publications of recent ACADIA, Fabricate, Rob|Arch, and IASS conferences, as well as in the book Towards a Robotic Architecture and the journals Construction Robotics and TAD. Daniel was a 2021 Fellow at the Design Akademie Saaleck (dieDAS), and his work has been exhibited at Design Miami/ Basel and other international venues.

Daniel was previously a Lecturer at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he taught digital fabrication. Additionally, he led an intensive summer masterclass at the University of Technology Sydney. Daniel was recently a Research Associate at Autodesk, where he developed computer-vision technologies for construction robotics. Daniel holds a Doctor of Design from the GSD, a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis with a self-guided special major in Sustainable Design.