Ebrahim Poustinchi, an award-winning artist, designer, curator, and inventor, is a tenured Associate Professor of digital design/architecture, and the founder/director of the Robotically Augmented Design (RAD) Lab at Kent State University, and the founding principal of the Studio EP, an experimental art and design practice. Ebrahim completed his post-professional architecture degree, focusing on robotics and technology, under Greg Lynn at UCLA. He holds a bachelor's degree in architecture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran, Iran. He has previously taught at the University of Kentucky and UCLA.
Poustinchi's creative work and research are focused on the intersection of design, art, worldbuilding, space, media, and robotics, with an emphasis on an alternative reading of Animism and human/non-human dialogue through artistic design, form-making and sculpture, cyber-physical installations, UI/UX design, Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), physical computation, and tangible interfaces.
Ebrahim is the inventor of two patents/inventions focusing on the creative use of industrial robotics, and has widely lectured, taught workshops, and exhibited his work nationally and internationally. His research and creative work have been disseminated worldwide in various galleries, museums, Journals, and conferences, including the Museum of Moscow and the Meyerhold Theatre Center in Russia, the Arab American National Museum in Michigan, Jan Koniarek Gallery in Slovakia, Fully Booked Art Fair in Dubai, and Levantine Cultural Center, Perloff Gallery, Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum in Los Angles, and over ten different galleries, and museums in Iran as well as ZH magazine, International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), Journal of Engineering Technology (JET), ACADIA, CAADRIA, eCAADe, SIGraDi, ASCAAD, ASCA.
In 2012, he was the first prize winner of the Mohsen Rasoulof Award at the Tassvir Visual Arts Festival in Iran as the top Iranian graphic designer under 25 years old. Additionally, in 2021, he served as the guest curator and designer of the One Object at a Time exhibition at the Los Angeles Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum.
His creative design and scholarly work have been awarded/supported by several grants and donations from multiple institutions, including the Knight Foundation, Alpha Micron Inc., University of California Irvine's Jordan Center for Persian Studies, Kent State University, The Environmental Science and Design Research Institute (ESDRI), Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and Los Angeles Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum, among others. He is also the recipient of Kent State University's 2024 prestigious President's Faculty Excellence Award, which recognizes a faculty member for exceptional performance that leads to national or international recognition.
Poustinchi's recent book A Purple Architecture: Design in the Age of Physical-Virtual Continuum (Kerestes, Poustinchi, and Vahdat, 2024), published by Carnegie Mellon University ETC Press explores architecture, art, and design in the hyper-mediated era of AI and technological mediation. It collects design ideas through essays and projects by internationally recognized designers and thinkers, in addition to critical essays by the editors. The book has won the prestigious 2024 next-generation indie book awards as the book of the year in the "ART" category.
© 2024 Designed by Ebrahim Poustinchi (Studio EP L.L.C.). All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted.