Behnaz Farahi

2016 Fellow

Trained as an architect, Behnaz Farahi is an award-winning designer and critical maker based in Los Angeles. She holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a Master of Architecture degree from the USC School of Architecture.

Behnaz is an Assistant Professor of Transformative Design at MIT Media Lab’s Media Arts + Sciences program, as well as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Design, California State University, Long Beach. She explores how to foster an empathetic relationship between the human body and the space around it using computational systems. Her work addresses critical issues such as feminism, emotion, perception and social interaction.

Behnaz has won several awards including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Digital Design Award, Innovation By Design Fast Company Award, and World Technology Award. She is a co-editor of an issue of AD, ‘3D Printed Body Architecture’ (2017) and ‘Interactive Futures’ (forthcoming).

Her work has been exhibited internationally and has been featured in several magazines and online websites including WIRED, BBC, CNN,The Guardian, Motherboard, Dezeen, Frame Magazine, The Creators Project and many more. She was the recipient of a MADWORKSHOP fellowship for her project, Caress of the Gaze, and she received the Rock Hudson Fellowship.

Farahi has worked with leading firms such as Autodesk, Fuksas Studio, and 3DSystems / will-i-am. She has also collaborated with Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis on two NASA-funded research projects developing a robotic fabrication technology to 3D print structures on the moon and on Mars.