Ercüment Görgül

 

PhDc. Neuroscience & Built Environment; MA Art History; MDes Interaction; MSc Architecture; BArch (HHons), Assoc. AIA, LEED AP

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Ercument Gorgul has worked as a Senior Designer for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) in USA, where he was a key member of the design team on numerous large-scale projects in the US and in the Middle East. He served as the first full-time, non-Chinese foreign faculty member of Tongji University, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he was instrumental elevating the education quality and teaching innovation as well as international graduate school acceptance rates of the school.

Among his studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) and as a cross- registered student in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (course 4 and MAS), Ercu held positions as research associate and teaching assistant at former Harvard Center for Design Informatics led by Professor (Emeritus) Spiro Pollalis, where he was the member of the team receiving Provost Grant for Innovation in Instructional Technology among other achievements. Based in Shanghai, since late 2008, Ercu is the founder and lead designer of EGG, a young research, technology and experience consulting firm, providing assistance to businesses on design-based strategies and solutions; and partner of NAX, a small practice on design for bespoke residential, hospitality and retail projects. Operating at the intersection of knowledge, history, space, materiality, engineering and time, the work of both businesses covers strategy, identity, education, interiors, architecture, graphics, furniture and interactive solutions.

As a multiple award-winning educator, designer and technologist, Ercument directed numerous courses and workshops for leading architecture and design programs for top universities and institutions. Ercu was the director of 2009 experimental summer program in architecture at the University of Hong Kong (HKU); Director of the 2013 and 2016 summer advanced workshop program in computational crafts at the Shih Chien University in Taipei; Regional coordinator for 2014, 2015, 2021 and 2022 Global Summer School for Barcelona based Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC); and Director of International Programs for Shanghai based Studio Alpha. Other selected teaching appointments include Tsinghua University in Beijing, Tongji and Shanghai Universities in Shanghai, Hochschule für Technik in Stuttgart (HFT) and London-based Architectural Association's (AA) Visiting Schools. His collaborative and research-oriented work has been exhibited extensively including Hong Kong- Shenzhen Bi-city Biennial and at the Venice Biennial.

Ercu has been an invited guest critic at Harvard and Catholic Universities as well as at University of Southern California in US and at Shanghai University in China. Ercu instructs courses and studio focused on experimental teaching methods, on alternative means of spatial representation using film, digital media and AI. His academic interests lie on multiple facets of future of cities alongside teaching creativity and cultivating cross-disciplinary talent by developing different methods and mechanisms of abstraction based on phenomenology and intuition. Ercu is an expert on design and development of curricula focused in design and experience of indoor and outdoor spaces; on storytelling; on parametrics and digital crafting and on performative and lenient design thinking. 

Ercu Gorgul holds a High Honors Bachelor degree from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, two Masters from Istanbul Technical University, and a Masters from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is currently pursuing a PhD on Neuroscience and Built Environment. Ercu is a registered architect in Turkey and is an Associate AIA and LEED AP in the US. He is a member of ANFA ACE since 2021.