Alessandro Columbano

Alessandro is a Senior Lecturer and MArch Architecture (RIBA pt.2) Course Director at the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design. He also co-established and leads the Co\\aborative Lab:oratory (Co.LAB) an award winning interdisciplinary design-research initiative within the school that integrates teaching with creative practices through live projects. 

Alessandro leads modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in architectural studio, technology and history and theory in design, covering broad themes of psychogeography readings of the city, digital manufacturing and craft-based practices, socio-materiality, design entrepreneurialism, architecture and cinematic practices, Italian 20th Century art and architecture movements, trans-disciplinary design practice.

Alessandro has been as Enterprise School Lead role: working on the academic strategy and creative direction for enterprise and innovation activity in the Birmingham School of Architecture & Design, KEF coordination, CPD, consultancy, sponsorships and external industry activity. 

Key projects include co-developing STEAMhouse with Birmingham City University and Eastside Projects, and designing DoE Skills Bootcamps in Climate Literacy and Retrofit for the West Midlands Combined Authority.

Alessandro was Steamhouse Academic Lead: connecting academics across the University, curriculum design, member’s design development, research collaborations and building design advisor for the ERDF project – a prototyping and innovation centre. 

Alessandro's research is predominantly practice based and inherently linked in enterprise activity within architectural education.

Academic research interests can be categorised in five intertwined themes; contemporary vernacular language of digital-analogue craft processes, communal production/fabrication, transmedia representation for architecture, agency/entrepreneurialism in the design studio.