Xavier De Kestelier
Foster + Partner / Joint Head of Specialist Modelling Group (SMG)
Xavier De Kestelier is joint head of Foster + Partners’ Specialist Modelling Group (SMG), the architecture practice’s multi-disciplinary research and development group. With this team of computational architects and engineers, he has worked on projects such as Beijing Airport, Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, Kuwait Airport and the Yachtplus super yachts.
His team has acted as a design and technology catalyst and has been involved in ground breaking research in the field of large scale 3d printing. They were for example part of a consortium set up by the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore the possibilities of 3D printing to construct lunar habitations. Addressing the challenges of transporting materials to the moon, the study is investigating the use of lunar soil, known as regolith, as building matter.
Over the years Xavier has been a Visiting Professor at Ghent University, Adjunct Professor at Syracuse University and is currently a Teaching Fellow at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Since 2010 , he has been one of the directors of Smartgeometry, a non-profit educational organisation for computational design and digital fabrication