Liss C. Werner, MaArch
Liss C. Werner, MaArch is director of Tactile Architecture — Office für Systemarchitektur and Assistant Professor of Architecture and Cybernetics at Technical University Berlin, where she founded the CyPhyLab.
Liss’s main interest and research subject lies in the relevance and implications of cybernetics, for computational architecture in C21, exploring code-based tools to provoke an architectural vocabulary that allows architecture to depart from the 19th century understanding of predetermined static form and the establishment of Euclidean space per-se towards an architecture of cybernetics, self-organization, agent-based formations, and biological understanding.
She earned her Master’s of Architecture with commendation and Diploma of Architecture from The Bartlett, and a 1st class BaArts from the University of Westminster.
As practicing project architect, Liss has worked in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia. As architectural educator and researcher, she has been teaching and lecturing since 2002 at the following universities: Carnegie Mellon University, Texas Tech University, CalArts, FIU, and MIT in the United States; the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom; Kunstuniversität Linz: Institute for Art and Design in Austria; DIA, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Technical University Berlin, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Bauhaus University Weimar, University Kassel, and Berlin University of the Art in Germany; and CANactions Architecture Festival in the Ukraine.
She will be the conference chair of eCAADe 2020 in Berlin. She coedited Understanding Complex Urban Systems, Cybernetics: state of the art, and [En]Coding Architecture — the book, Grammar, Code and Computation, authored Clarifying the Matter — It’s a phase change not a Paradigm Shift, it’s a stage change, and Biological Computation of Physarum from DLA to spatial adaptive, and coauthored Data Flow a GIS based interactive planning tool for educational facilities and Multi-Dimensional Interface Based Spatial Adaption A Prototype For A Multi-Sensory User Interface Employing Elastic Materials. She lectures at many universities and conferences — watch her talks Cybernetic Serendipity Reimaged and Semiosphere and Neurotecture or The Causation of Architecture. Watch her videos.
Liss has been awarded financial grants to assist funding her work including Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art @ the Frontier for $2,000, EnCoding Architecture 2013 for $16,000, and Ace of Space for $2,500, and several IoT and Architecture projects by the European Union under H2020 for approximately $1 million to fund her CyPhyLab at TU Berlin.
She formed the computational design studio Codes in the Clouds. Liss looks at the growth of sublime, philosophically, and tectonically challenging generations of form to arrive at provocative architectural prototypes with embedded data and intelligence. Her research focuses on cybernetic principles resulting in explorative architecture derived through behavioral logic and scripting, developing dynamic design strategies, and cross-disciplinary design thinking. Her studio was exhibited and published at Digital Futures, Tongji University in Shanghai, and the 13th Venice Biennale 2012 in the Slovenian pavilion in conjunction with Maribor 2112AI 100YC and the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.
She received the German Enterprise Award Best for Modern Urban Architecture & Design 2017.
Liss wears black, loves her cats, and believes that Form is a verb and not a noun. This is where architecture and passion meet.
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