Marcos Cruz is an architect and Reader at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His research has focused for many years on the design and creation of innovative environments.
He has developed a people-centric approach by reconsidering the contemporary body and it’s broader social, aesthetic and technological dimension in architecture.
He has also taught and worked on many projects that utilize living matter in buildings, most of all the utilization of bacteria and algae. As co-founder of Syn.de.Bio and the BiotA LAB he has investigated design that is driven by advances not only in computation but also in biotechnology and synthetic biology, fields that he believes are radically changing the future of architecture.
Cruz was the Director of the Bartlett between January 2010 and January 2014, having been responsible for a major transformation of the school in terms of its current internationalization and uncontested reputation as the number one school in the UK.
His varied teaching activity as an investigator, tutor and critic has been carried out in numerous international universities, including the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, University of Westminster and University California Los Angeles (UCLA), but most of all at University College London where he has run MArch Unit 20 for over 14 years.
In collaboration with Marjan Colletti and Richard Beckett, this unit continues to be one of the most emblematic and forward-thinking at the Bartlett, with great emphasis on the application of novel digital technologies and environmentally-sensitive solutions to building design.
He is also regularly invited as an advisor to academic institutions as well as a jury member of International competitions.