Tomás Vivanco specializes in Architecture, Science-Technology-Society (CTS), Speculative Design and Futures, Ecosystem-Oriented Design, Material Systems, and Digital Technologies. He is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Fab Lab Austral at the Catholic University of Chile. He holds a degree in Architecture from UVM, a Master’s in Advanced Design from ELISAVA – Pompeu Fabra University, and a Master’s in Advanced Architecture from IAAC – Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Architecture with a focus on Digital Futures at Tongji University.
Tomás is an Assistant Professor at the UC School of Design and the Director of the Regional Fab Lab Austral UC in Puerto Williams. In the undergraduate program, he teaches courses on Associative Design and Workshops with themes ranging from Bio Fabrication, Low-Energy Material Systems, Speculative Design, and Ecosystem-Oriented Design. In the Master’s in Advanced Design program, he teaches courses on Prototype and Systems Anatomy, as well as Speculative Design.
He has received funding from various public and private sources for research, creation, and knowledge transfer projects. Notable projects include “Sandbot,” a 3D printing robot for sand (FONDART); Smart Citizen Santiago (CORFO); the development of a mycelium fungal structural block for a 1:1 prototype construction (VRI, UC); the study and adoption of IoT in residential housing in Chile, focusing on the concept of a ‘connected home’ through ethnography and design research (Semilla FADEU UC); the development and characterization of bioplastics for the implementation of the REP law by 2025 in the industry (FONDART); “Transfers: Digital Reinterpretation of Yagan Maritorial Objects” (FONDART); “Towards a National Strategy for Promoting Collaboration Networks and Technological Developers in Chile: a Study and Platform for Design and Distributed Production in Emergency Contexts” (COVID19, ANID); and “Territorial Bioplastic: A Data-Driven Platform for the Development of Bioplastics from Abundant Biomass Sources” (FONDEF IT, ANID), among others.
He is a co-founder of Fab Lab Santiago, one of the pioneering digital fabrication laboratories in Chile, co-curator of the Chile Pavilion at the 2016 London Design Biennale with the project “The Counterculture Room,” which received an honorable mention, and co-organized the 13th Fab Labs World Meeting in Santiago in 2017 under the theme “Fabricating Society.” Tomás has exhibited and presented his work at various international conferences, exhibitions, and events, including the Fab Lab Conferences, Digital Futures Shanghai, Thessaloniki Design Week, Smart City World Expo, various Design Festivals in Latin America, the Ibero-American Society of Digital Graphics, and the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, among others. He is a Research Fellow at the Fab City Foundation – Fab Lab Barcelona and Digital Futures at Tongji University. His research and work focus on the impact of emerging digital technologies on society, digitalization for the development of sustainable ecosystems and communities, computational material systems, and distributed digital design and manufacturing.