Loukia Tsafoulia, RA (EU), MSAAD, Dipl.-Ing.

Loukia Tsafoulia is a registered EU architect-engineer, educator, and researcher. She is an Assistant Professor in the tenure track at the College of Architecture and the Built Environment, Thomas Jefferson University, where she has cofounded and codirects the Synesthetic Research and Design Lab, a platform in which inclusive design, interactive art, digital culture, and emergent health sciences meet. She is also the co-founder of PLB Design and Research Studio.

She holds a Post-Professional MS in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University in New York and obtained her professional architecture-engineering degree from the School of Architecture at the National Polytechnic University of Athens, Greece, where she is currently a PhD candidate. Her dissertation explores the relationships between performative environments, cognitive sciences, and cybernetic experiments. Situated at the intersection of historical inquiry and critical practice, her work explores the dynamics between design and scientific fields. It is centered on the human and its interactions with the objects and environments it negotiates and addresses access and acceptance through perceptually and physically inclusive spaces. 

She is the editor and author of the book publications Transient Spaces (2019) and KatOikia, Housing Explorations at the Intersection of Pedagogy and Practice (2023). Her scholarly and applied research includes numerous paper and book chapter publications, book editorials, conference presentations, and international exhibitions of constructed immersive environments at the intersection of health, inclusive design, art, and technology. Her exhibited work includes international art and design venues such as the Trajan's Market Museum of the Imperial Fora in Rome, Italy (2022), the 2021 European Cultural Center, Venice Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy, the Municipal Theater of Piraeus in Athens, Greece (2021-2022), the IE Creativity Center in Segovia (2023), the London 3D print show, and the ICFF in New York. She has been awarded numerous funding for developing and exhibiting this work. Together with Severino Alfonso, she is currently an artist in residence at the S+T+ARTS Resilence European Horizon Program.

Before joining TJU, Loukia developed, taught, and coordinated design studios, labs, and seminars at Pratt Institute, Parsons The New School, CUNY, the Spitzer School of Architecture, and NYC College of Technology. She has collaborated professionally with Studio Dror and LEESER Architecture in New York, K+T Architecture, and the NTU Urban Environment Lab in Athens.