Allen Sayegh is Design Critic and Senior Interaction Technologies Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the director of REAL, the Responsive Environment and Artifacts Lab at Harvard.
Sayegh is an architect, designer, and educator and the principal of INVIVIA – an award winning global design firm.
Sayegh’s academic research and professional practice span a period of two decades working on projects of varied scales. He has taught at different institutions and has worked on many different projects throughout the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
His courses and practice focus on technologically driven architectural design, exploring potentials of media and technology integrated built environment, Interaction design and the study of architectural and urban space thought through the impact of changing technology. His work is characterized as the synthesis of architecture, digital art and design in coming up with innovative architectural human interfaces and responsive environments.
Sayegh, most recently co-founded the ALIVE group at Harvard– an interdisciplinary team of scientists and designers from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the WYSS Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In addition to his design work he has a deep interest in the visual arts and has been a recurring visiting professor at the Harvard Carpenter Center of Visual and Environmental Studies offering courses in the areas of media and the built environment such as; Sculpting Motion, Interactive Spaces, Augmented Architecture, Cinematic Architecture, and Responsive Environments.
Sayegh’s Lab at Harvard – REAL looks into the future of built environment from a technologically augmented point of view with a strong focus on sustainability and longevity of responsive and technologically design driven environments. His portfolio of work has a diverse list of clients including Microsoft, Harvard University, Solidere and the city of Beirut, The city of Bergamo, LG, MIT/DARPA, NY Museum of Natural History, The Bostonian Society, Hewlett Packard, SAMSUNG, Guggenheim Museum NY, the Athens Olympic Committee and numerous Design and Art Biennials. His work has been recognized in various media including New York Times, ID, Axis, Wired and has exhibited at the Guggenheim NY, The Duomo in Florence, The Storefront of Art and Architecture, Moscow, Kwangju Biennale, CHI, etc.