Ilmar Hurkxkens is head of the Geographic Design cluster at Boskalis and lecturer at the Section Landscape Architecture, Departement of Urbanism at the Delft University of Technology. His work focuses on the form and processes of natural granular materials using advanced 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 and the Digital Culture Work Grant from the Migros Culture Percentage with Ungenau Robotics in 2018. He is co-founder of LANDSKIP, a laboratory centred on the production and deployment of new technologies for landscape transformation. In 2020 he was nominated for the ETH Medal for his dissertation “Robotic Landscapes” at the NCCR Digital Fabrication after which he completed a postdoc at Gramazio Kohler Research. Part of his doctoral research is published in the publication “Robotic Landscapes: Designing the Unfinished” by Park Books in Zurich 2022.
Nomination Public & Landscape Architecture of the Year 2024
February 2024 NOMINATIONArch Daily Building of the Year 2024 Award
Circularity Park / Gramazio Kohler Research + Robotic Systems Lab + Chair of Landscape Architecture, ETH Zürich
https://www.archdaily.com/1010430
Scientific Merit Award
May 2023 AWARDJames Melsom, Ilmar Hurkxkens
By the Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture for the article
“Eroding Terrains: Developing Computational Design Tools for Interactive Site Erosion”
Scientific Excellence Award
May 2021 AWARDIlmar Hurkxkens, Dave Pigram, and James Melsom
By the Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture for the article
“Shifting Sands: Experimental Robotic Earth-Moving Strategies in Dynamic Coastal Environments”
ETH Medal Nomination
September 2020 Nominated for the Silver Medal of the ETH Zurich for outstanding doctoral theses
“Robotic Landscapes: Topological Approaches to Terrain, Design, and Fabrication”
Digital Culture Work Grant
Oktober 2018Fabian Bircher and Ilmar Hurkxkens
Migros-Kulturprozent for the promotion of digital media art
https://www.digitalbrainstorming.ch/de/program/wbdkvergabe2018
©2025