Ilmar Hurkxkens

STUDIO ILMAR HURKXKENS

The work of Ilmar Hurkxkens focuses on the form and processes of natural granular materials using advanced landscape surveying, modelling, and fabrication techniques. After graduating in architecture with an honourable mention from Delft University of Technology, he worked at the Chair of Landscape Architecture of Professor Christophe Girot, ETH Zurich, where he was DesignLab coordinator and member of the Landscape Visualization and Modeling Lab. He received the Young Researcher Award from the Volkswagen Foundation in 2013, the Digital Culture Work Grant from the Migros Culture Percentage with Ungenau Robotics in 2018 and in 2020 he was nominated for the ETH Medal for his dissertation “Robotic Landscapes” at the NCCR Digital Fabrication. He is co-founder of LANDSKIP, a laboratory centred on the production and deployment of new technologies for landscape transformation. His own firm Studio Ilmar Hurkxkens works on landscape architectural projects in Switzerland, Netherlands and Greece. As co-editor of Pamphlet 19, he assessed the importance of field instruments for landscape design. Currently, he holds a postdoc position at Gramazio Kohler Research, is lecturer in the Master of Science in Landscape Architecture ETH Zurich and co-editor of the upcoming publication “Robotic Landscapes: Designing the Unfinished” by Park Books in Zurich.

︎