Team
An experimental platform for architecture and urban design research.
RVTR’s work operates across scales to position design as an active agent in continually evolving ecologies: biotic, social, environmental, technological and cultural. Projects range from the urban futures of regional territories, to high-performance building design, to prototype-based research in responsive envelope systems and digitally crafted objects. A complex systems approach ties these scales together, along with a belief in the power of design to change the world for the better.
Since 2007 the directors have brought design research into practice, to advance both professional and disciplinary discourse and the depth of thinking in the work. The lab operates as an experimental think tank with national funding agencies, philanthropic foundations and industry partners, and works with multidisciplinary teams of academic, scientific and industry partners and professional consultants.
The lab’s work has received the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers (2008), an Architect magazine R+D Award (2010) and an R+D Honorable Mention (2016). In 2016 RVTR represented Canada at the Venice Architecture Biennale as part of EXTRACTION, led by curator Pierre Bélanger.
Co-founder of RVTR, Toronto, 2007
Professor of Architecture, Taubman College
Associate Vice President for Research, University of Michigan
Geoffrey Thün
Director of Design Research, RVTR. Professor of Architecture, Taubman College; Associate Vice President for Research, University of Michigan
Geoffrey Thün is a designer, researcher and educator, and a director of RVTR, which he co-founded in Toronto in 2007 with Kathy Velikov, Colin Ripley and Paul Raff; he leads the lab’s design research. He is Professor of Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and Associate Vice President for Research: Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts at the University of Michigan, where he is the research office’s liaison to those units. He is also co-director of the university’s Urban Collaboratory.
AIA College of Fellows, 2025
President of ACADIA, 2018–2020
Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice, Taubman College
Kathy Velikov, FAIA
Director, RVTR. Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice, Taubman College
Kathy Velikov is an architect, researcher and educator, and a director of RVTR, the research lab she co-founded in Toronto in 2007 with Geoffrey Thün, Colin Ripley and Paul Raff. She is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, and directs the Institute for Advanced Construction Futures, a University of Michigan Impact Institute funded in January 2026 to advance low-carbon construction. She is licensed in Michigan and Ontario. In 2025 she was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Funding and collaboration
RVTR is funded by the University of Michigan and by external grants and sponsored research. Funders have included the National Science Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the AIA Upjohn Research Initiative, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Mellon Foundation through the Michigan-Mellon project, the Belmont Forum’s SUGI Food-Water-Energy Nexus program, the Urban Studies Foundation, Ford Motor Company, Guardian Industries, Wanxiang Group, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Power Authority. The lab’s collaborators include engineers, scientists, archaeologists, landscape architects, fabricators and other research groups, among them the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Arup, OPSYS, POST, TU Delft, Purdue University, Michigan State University and Wayne State University.
Alumni
Everyone who has worked in RVTR since 2007, with their years in the lab. Links lead to their current work.
(Director 2007–2010),
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(Director 2007–2017), Professor of Architecture, Toronto Metropolitan University,
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(2016–2019),
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(2021–2024),
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(2025)