Kristof Crolla 高仕棠

Founder, Principal

A/Prof. Dr. Ir. Arch. Kristof Crolla 高仕棠 is a licensed architect who combines his architectural practice “Laboratory for Explorative Architecture & Design Ltd.” (LEAD) with his position as Associate Dean (Special Projects) and tenured Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) where he teaches in the Master of Architecture and directs the Bachelor of Arts & Science Design+ programme. After graduating Magna Cum Laude as Civil Architectural Engineer from Ghent University in 2003, he practiced in Belgium at Bureau Buildings & Techniques and independently designed and built his first project, House for an Artist. He moved to London in 2005 to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London (AA)’s Master of Architecture programme Design Research Laboratory (DRL), from where his student work was exhibited at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale.  Following this he worked for several years as Lead Architect for the Pritzker prize winning Zaha Hadid Architects, while teaching in parallel at the AA and other institutions worldwide.  He has been invited as a jury critic, lecturer, and tutor in numerous institutions throughout Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, Chile and South Africa. Kristof Crolla is currently based in Hong Kong, where he received numerous design awards and accolades for his work focussing on the strategic integration of latest technologies in the architectural design and implementation process. He is best known for the projects “YEZO”, “Golden Moon”, and “ZCB Bamboo Pavilion” for which he a.o. received the World Architecture Festival Small Project of the Year 2016 award. In 2018, he completed his PhD studies at RMIT, Melbourne, with the doctoral dissertation “Building Simplexity – The ‘More or Less’ of Post-Digital Architecture Practice” for which received the 2016 RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Impact – Higher Degree by Research. In 2019, he was appointed by the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) as a Task Force Expert Member – Bamboo Construction.