Rachel Dickey

Rachel Dickey is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture and founder of Studio Dickey, a public art and design practice. She holds a Masters of Design Studies with a concentration in technology from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Master of Architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology, where she received the Ventulett Distinguished Chair Award and Prize for her graduate thesis project.

As a teacher of undergraduate and graduate architecture studios and computational design seminars, her classes investigate critical, theoretical, and practical technological approaches that emphasize design agency in architecture. Her research and work have been published in Architectural Review, MIT Press Arteca Journal, Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art, and Design, and in Paradigms in Computing. Dickey has exhibited at the Angels Gate Cultural Center, Office for the Arts at Harvard, Des Cours in New Orleans, and the Museum of Design in Atlanta.

Recognizing that current technologies are allowing for an increasingly direct relationship between design and translation, her research seeks to investigate the potential for a machine and material epistemology in architecture. It explores the use of machines and tools in design not only in terms of material manipulation, but also as instruments, which affect people and their environments. Dickey’s particular area of interest examines ways of engaging the body and technology to uncover design approaches that demonstrate the influential capacity of architecture to impact and enhance the lives of those who encounter it.