TOBIAS KLEIN

Tobias Klein, born 1979 in Bonn, is a German Artist and Architect. Trained as an Architect, his work articulates a syncretism of contemporary CAD/CAM technologies with site andculturally specific design narratives, intuitive non-linear design processes, and historicalcultural references. He sees the multiplicity of roles from architect, artist and culturalagitator as the creator-craftsman that finally has the chance to overcome the fifteen- andsixteenth-century schism of intellectual from manual labour, as well as the nineteenth-century gulf between automatic mechanization and poetic creation.

His works are exhibited international at the London Science Museum, the V&A, The Venice Architectural Biennale, the Science Gallery (Melbourne), the container (Tokyo), theBellevue Arts Museum, the MoCA Taipei, Museum of Moscow and Vancouver and in thepermanent collection of China’s first 3D Print Museum in Shanghai, the Museum of Glass inTacoma (USA) and the Antwerp Fashion Museum (MoMu). In 2020, The UniversityMuseum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong, opened a retrospective exhibition of his works fromthe past 15 years, accompanied by a publication with the same title as the exhibition,Metamorphosis or Confrontation.

Through his works, writings, he established the notion of Digital Craftsmanship as an operational synthesis between digital and physical materials and tools as poetic (Poïesis)and technical (Technê) expressions, opposing a traditional dualistic separation of digitalwork-flows and analogue making and material understanding.

Tobias Klein is an Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. Before 2014, he ran a postgraduate studio at the Architectural Association andthe Royal College of Art and was invited Guest Professor at the TU Innsbruck Studio 3,Institute for Experimental Architecture. Klein founded, and has been the director of theArchitectural Association’s Visiting School, Post-Industrial Landscapes since 2013.