Making Energy Visible: Sensing Data, Seeing Energy

Please join us for a panel discussion connecting artistic and scientific research in the fields of urbanism and architecture and organized in conjunction with the exhibition Making Energy Visible, curated by Tülay Atak.

Energy drives modern life. We encounter its effects—light, warmth, motion—yet the infrastructures and urban systems that sustain them remain mostly unseen. This panel will explore energy futures in urban contexts by focusing on the possibilities that alternative sources of energy and alternative systems of distribution present. With examples from academic research and professional fields, the panel will bring together insights from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute NY, and the City of New York.

The exhibition and the related public events have been made possible by New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and with support from The Graham Foundation, Pratt Institute School of Architecture, The University of Applied Arts, Vienna. 

Speakers:
Tülay Atak, Curator, Making Energy Visible
Alex Nutkiewicz, Senior Consultant of the Cities Team, Buro Happold
Bernhard Sommer, Co-Founder, EXIKON architecture and sustainability
Małgorzata Sommer-Nawara, Co-Founded, EXIKON architecture and sustainability
Alexandros Tsamis, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, RPI
   
About the Speakers:

Tülay Atak is an architect, an architectural historian, and theorist. Her research focuses on the intersection between environmental history and architecture. She curated an exhibition Energy at the Threshold of the Visible World at the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab in Vienna (2024). Her coedited book, Pedagogical Experiments in Architecture for a Changing Climate (Routledge, 2024), brings together essays by architectural educators addressing climate crisis. She received her bachelor’s degree at METU in Ankara, Turkey, and pursued her PhD at University of California, Los Angeles. Her scholarship has appeared in journals and edited volumes such as Architectural Theory Review, OASE Journal of Architecture, Future Anterior, PMLA, Journal of Architecture Education, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Invention d’une Architecte, and Construction Savante. 

Alex Nutkiewicz is a Senior Consultant with the Cities team at Buro Happold, contributing to consulting projects focused on evaluating the technological and economic feasibility of deploying new energy systems across cities. Her work integrates data-driven and physics-based modeling techniques to create interpretable tools to inform decision-making for energy-related challenges in the urban built environment. Prior to joining Buro Happold, Nutkiewicz received her PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, where her research explored how urban environments can influence building energy consumption and how those insights can drive energy efficient design and retrofits.

Bernhard Sommer is in the Department of Energy Design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is the founder of the civil engineering office EXIKON architecture and sustainability. In 2022 he has been elected President of the Chamber of Chartered Engineers for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland. He is a member of the digitization committee and chairman of the chamber's OIB guidelines committee and represents the chamber at the stakeholder advisory board of the Austrian Institute for Building Technology (OIB). He has held many lectures at numerous universities in Germany and abroad, including the University of Innsbruck, the TU Delft, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Lincoln, and the American University of Beirut.

Małgorzata Sommer-Nawara co-founded the civil engineering firm EXIKON. Her professional focus lies in sustainability, material ecology, and environmental performance in architecture. The firm received the Austrian State Prize for Architecture and Sustainability in 2019 and was awarded the Lower Austrian Building Award in 2024, recognizing the firm’s contributions as specialist consultants in ecology and energy efficiency, sustainability, and room acoustics. Sommer-Nawara holds ongoing teaching appointments as a lecturer in the Green Building program at FH Campus Wien, at FH Joanneum in Graz, and at the Institute of Building Construction and Design (HB2) at TU Wien. She also serves on the board of IG Architektur, an advocacy organization dedicated to advancing architectural practice and culture and serves as Chair of the Committee for Sustainability and Circular Economy of the Chamber of Civil Engineers. 

Alexandros Tsamis is an architect and associate professor at the School of Architecture, RPI. He currently serves as the Graduate Program Director of the Built Ecologies MS & Ph.D. programs and the Director of CASE. He earned his Ph.D. in Architecture, Design and Computation and Master of Science (SMArchS) in Design and Building Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). With a working definition for the built environment as the Effective Distribution of Material, Energy and Information in Space for Socio-Natural Affect, Tsamis works at the intersection of design and the architectural sciences. He focuses on next-generation composite materials, climate-adaptive and cyber-physical energy systems, and advanced manufacturing technologies.