Dana Cupkova

Dana Cupkova is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture and Graduate Track Chair of the Regenerative & Sustainable Design program. She directs EPIPHYTE Lab, a design and research collaborative recognized by ARCHITECT Magazine as a Next Progressives design practice in 2018. From 2005-12, she was a visiting assistant professor at Cornell University, Department of Architecture, and from 2014-18, she served on the ACADIA Board of Directors. Cupkova was a 2022–23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar and has served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC) since 2019.

Cupkova’s design work is driven by a holistic vision of the built environment, centered on the relationship between ecology and technology and architecture’s capacity to become ecologically vibrant. Through the study of circularity, bio-based processes, and advanced manufacturing, she investigates decarbonization strategies that transform organic and inorganic waste streams into ​l​ocally accessible material resources. In pursuit of aesthetics of ecological intimacy, her design and research seek attunement with natural processes across architecture and landscape, integrating computational design with environmental thermodynamics to advance regenerative material systems and the spatial dynamics of ecological resilience.