Marirena Kladeftira is a Design Tech Innovation Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Cornell Design Tech. By bridging design, fabrication, and human craft, she investigates adaptive, low-impact construction systems. She challenges traditional notions of automation, prioritizing localized, anthropocentric solutions that enhance human agency and vocational fulfillment. She has made contributions to digital manufacturing and material processing methods, design methodologies for modular systems, as well as new models of cooperation with construction robots.

Her work has earned recognition through awards, invited talks, and exhibitions at prestigious venues, including the Venice Biennale, ZAZ Bellerive Museum, Kunsthalle Zurich, and the Swiss Sustainability Forum.

Marirena holds a doctorate from ETH Zurich as a doctoral fellow of the NCCR Digital Fabrication. Her thesis investigated the potential of AM for ultra-lightweight modular structures by distilling intelligence in the smallest part of the system: its joints. Before joining Cornell, she was a postdoctoral researcher at EPFL, researching human-robot collaboration for adaptive fabrication, hybrid craft, and sustainable reuse practices.

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Marirena is always curious about new technologies, the creative potential they can unlock for humans, innovative materials, and unique perceptions of space and architectural form.