Kai Franz

Born 1983 in Cologne/Germany.

Kai Franz lives and works as artist, architect and educator in Providence, RI/USA. He received undergraduate degrees in architecture from RWTH Aachen (2006), and ETH Zurich (2008). Parallel to his studies in architecture Kai developed an interest in computer science and investigated it’s integration in the architectural design process.

2007, he worked as a researcher for the Chair for Information Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In 2008/09, he joined the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam and later New York City.

2009, Kai Franz was nominated as a Fulbright Scholar. Kai studied fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2011, he was awarded the KPF Traveling Fellowship and in 2012 he graduated with honors from Princeton University (M-Arch).

Since 2007, Kai has taught in both the fine arts and architecture at ETH Zurich, Princeton University, McGill University, and RISD. Today he is an Assistant Professor in the division of Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design.

His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and in Germany. Current projects include: Plopper (Dual-Axis Precision Deposition System), 2012 – ongoing, on view at RISD Museum during the Faculty Biennial (2013) and Pixilerations v.9 (2012). In September 2014, Edition Solitude will publish an artist catalog of Kai Franz’s work, coinciding with a solo exhibition at the Akademie Schloss Solitude.