Emmanouil (Manos) Vermissó is a tenured Associate Professor focusing on Design Computation and Creativity. He is a registered architect in Greece and a doctoral candidate at the University of Patras, studying human and computational Creativity. He has served on the School of Architecture faculty since 2008, teaching a wide range of academic courses, including most Architectural Design Studio levels and specialized research seminars. Recent Topical Research studios (5th year) have examined urban complexity and self-organizing capacity of slums, cities and material systems to leverage low-tech creativity for urban regeneration student proposals in India and Bangladesh (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023). In addition, Emmanouil has designed and offered research seminars on AI-augmented Design Creativity; Emergence; Bottom-Up design methods; Biomorphic Design; Digital Fabrication; Synthetic Drawing methods and Responsive prototyping. Furthermore, he has co-taught workshops on the application of deep learning workflows for architectural design thinking (eCAADE 2019; Digital Futures 2020 & 2021; ACADIA 2021), examining the robustness of interconnected deep neural networks for addressing discrete design tasks.

Emmanouil’s academic scholarship at FAU occurs at the nexus of teaching and research, often pursuing one through the other. His academic interests span several areas of Design Computation and Emerging Technologies including applications of  Design Cognition; Generative Artificial Intelligence in Architectural ideation; Bottom-up design thinking and Bio-Inspired Design. His work represents a logical refinement, progressively shifting from pragmatic-aesthetic concerns of making (CNC-fabrication), to inspiration from nature-biology (Biomorphic), simulation of their principles through kinetic components (Responsive Prototyping), understanding of bio-inspired work through a “systems thinking” lens (Emergence & Self-organization), re-scaling of this theme from a material system to collective behavior and the low-tech ingenuity of emergent systems (Informal Settlements), and ultimately, interrogating the inherent creativity of such systems to support our own cognitive processes towards decision making. His past experimental work has been often framed within theoretical metaphors like the ‘non-trivial machine’, to explore design affordances.  At the core of his inquiry lies a ‘synthetic’ approach to pedagogy, integrating influences from areas that are external but complementary to Architecture. Former student-driven collaborations within FAU include design consulting for the FAU Owls Racing team in the FAU Department of Mechanical Engineering (2010-11). 

Emmanouil is twice GDFP Teaching & Research Fellow (Institute of International Education/Fulbright 2017, 2020); ACSA Creative Achievement Award winner (2016); joint NCARB Award recipient on the Integration of Practice and Education ($25,000); 3rd prize winner (joint) in the RESHAPE international competition for responsive wearables. His work has been presented and published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), ACADIA, ACSA, ANFA, CAADRIA, CAAD Futures, Digital Futures Young Series, eCAADe, SiGRADi, the International Conference on Design Computing & Cognition and the International Conference of Computational Creativity. 

Prior to joining academia, Emmanouil practiced architecture at Foster+Partners, AHMM and Porphyrios Associates in London, UK. He holds a Diploma in Architecture from the University of Westminster (London) and a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University (NY), being among the first scholars to study aspects of Classical Architecture using CAD/CAM. Currently, his primary research interest lies at the intersection of human and computational cognition, leveraging the capacity of semantic AI models and other generative tools to enhance existing design methods.