Adam Holloway

MA Digital Craft in Architecture. I conceived the programme and led it through validation in 2023, and hold academic responsibility for its curriculum. I lead Design for Digital Manufacture and Assembly, Advanced Digital Practice, and Final Project, and teach into Contextual Theory and Collaborative Studio. Second-semester students work on live research briefs set by external partners, among them MAKE Architects, PAYE Stonemasons, AF Jones Stonemasons and The Roundhouse Company.

MArchD Design Studio 2. I set the studio's annual research agenda and lead students through the year-long thesis project. The studio is anchored at Grymsdyke Farm, where work is tested at full scale in stone, earth, timber, hemp and paper. Recent agendas have examined generative AI as a design medium and the fabrication problems that arise when machine-generated geometry meets real material tolerance.

I also teach Digital Culture at undergraduate level and supervise dissertations.

Doctoral supervision. Co-Director of Studies for research on mixed reality and circular timber construction. I welcome enquiries on mixed reality in construction, craft knowledge and digital fabrication, low-carbon and reclaimed material systems, and computational design for irregular materials.

My research develops digital craft: computational design that augments material intelligence rather than replacing it. The tools now entering site work tend to turn the builder into an executor of instructions. I develop an alternative, augmented wayfaring, in which mixed reality delivers computational geometry as interpretive guidance that the builder resolves through material judgement. Deviation analysis after construction, read alongside participant reflection, records those judgements as evidence rather than error.

Three strands:
The Augmented Craftsperson. Mixed-reality methods for construction traditions with high tacit knowledge — brick masonry, cob, dry stone walling. Demonstrators include the multi-spiral shallow dome built with Dhammada Collective in Bhopal, the corbelled cob arch at Grymsdyke Farm, and Code Bothy.

Computational Tools for Material Practice. Algorithms and fabrication workflows developed against specific material systems and treated as research outputs in their own right. These include Silkworm, an open-source 3D printing toolpath plugin used internationally, and the tiling algorithm behind the Geneva Parliament timber interior.

Ecological Materials and Endangered Construction Cultures. Hempcrete, biorock, earth and reclaimed stone perform well but remain excluded from practice because specification systems demand deterministic material properties. This strand builds the missing evidence at architectural scale, including the RADD work on decommissioned materials.
 

Director of Adam Holloway Architects since 2015, working on computational design and digital fabrication for cultural, institutional and research clients. Commissions include the timber lantern over the debating chamber of the Swiss Parliament in Geneva and robotically 3D-printed ceramic tiles permanently installed at the V&A Museum.

Previously Director of Material Architecture Lab at UCL Bartlett, Head of Computational Design at Exploration Architecture, and architect at Wilkinson Eyre and PLP Architecture. Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, 2013–2018.

Exhibitions include the Venice Architecture Biennale (2025), London Design Festival (2025), Alcova Milan (2026), Dubai Expo (2021) and the Aram Gallery (2019).

ARB Registered Architect. RIBA Part III, University of Westminster. AA Diploma, Architectural Association. BA (Hons) Architecture, Oxford Brookes. Associate Fellow, Higher Education Academy.