Assistant Professor
Greene Building, Room 102

518-276-4060

Carla Leitão is an architect, professor, and writer bridging architectural practice, academic research, and innovative design. Since 2010, she has been a Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) School of Architecture, where her work at the CRAIVE Lab explores intersections of architecture, urban systems, technology, ubiquitous cultures, and immersive VR. At CRAIVE Lab, Leitão has developed research on assemblies and front-end design for Control Rooms, Interactive Spaces, and Education Environments, reimagining private, public, and institutional typologies.

Leitão coordinates the year long Final Project sequence (seminar + studio) and the core theory course “Contemporary Design Approaches” at RPI and serves as Co-Director of the ARCH program at RPI’s School of Architecture. In 2022&2023, she received a Seed Grant for “Innovative Pedagogies: Immersive and Embodied Learning,” under the leadership of Jonas Braasch and Mei Si. Additionally, she was awarded the Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Development Grant. She was also awarded the Brown’s Travelling Fellowship in 2018.

Her recent courses include topics include “Impermanence”, “Biodrome: Architecture in the Age of Epidemics,” “Landscapes of Oblivion,” “Proto-Room,” “Inception,” “Vision: Interface,” “Environmental History & Theory,” and “The Architecture of Civic Forums.”

Leitao is currently developing a publication with ACTAR, titled “Protoroom,” showcasing research from the last six to eight years.

As a Co-Founder of AUM Studio in New York and Spec.AE, Leitão has worked on various projects. Spec.AE designs environments integrating new media art, urban interactivity, and smart surfacing of spaces, blending diverse technologies and disciplines. The work engages with fields such as computer science, computer graphics, landscape, material sciences, robotics, urban design, product design, and geopolitics.

Leitão has gained valuable experience at Aires Mateus and Herzog & de Meuron. She curated “Portugal Now” at Cornell AAP Folio, an exhibition of over 20 Portuguese offices with conferences in Ithaca and New York City. Her publications include “4 Lines” (Akademie Schloss Solitude) and “City Fragments” (CBA).

Her exhibitions and installations include “Suture” at SCI-Arc and Tellic Gallery in Los Angeles, “True Romance” in Stuttgart, Germany, and “Young Blood” in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2021, she exhibited at the Venice Biennale, submitting the “ProtoSpaces” video piece and running a series of live online conversations called “Foundations.” These conversations featured guest speakers and a virtual audience, inquiring into innovative concepts for foundational structures of the future of societies.

She co-chaired an ACSA Conference Panel on “Addressability” in Detroit with Ed Keller in 2017. In addition to her roles at RPI, Leitão is the Instructor and Lisbon’s Local Coordinator of SITREP, an international school where she teaches design research studios and promotes collaborative design events.

Leitão’s accolades include the Brown’s Fellowship at RPI, a Traveling Fellowship, and a Schloss Solitude Foundation Fellowship. During her residency at Schloss Solitude, she worked on “True Romance,” the film “True Fiction,” and the publication “4 Lines.” She has received research grants from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for her Master of Science at Columbia University.

Carla lives and works between New York, USA, and Lisbon, Portugal, continuously contributing to the global discourse on architecture and design through her innovative and interdisciplinary approach.

www.aumstudio.org, https://www.clatcraive.net/