Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga is Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Inclusive Design at the School of Architecture at Northeastern University and Affiliate Assistant Professor at Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, where he directs the Scalable Design Participation Lab. Carlos was previously Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer with a joint appointment between the Department of Architecture and the Schwarzman College of Computing. His work combines design, computing, urban data, and public service to provide formal computational design methods that allow the broadest set of community members to shape their own environments sustainably and holistically with the support of computational intelligence.
His research has contributed with information models that enable concurrent design collaboration, computational interfaces for accessible multi-user design, decision-making algorithms for large-scale design synthesis, and AI models for civic data production. Carlos’ upcoming book, Drawing Out the Computer Map: Computing and Community Participation in the Design of the Built Environment, uncovers the computational and political history of computational tools for design and geocomputing and provides a critical framework to develop design tools to support community participation in the design of the built environment.
His work has been supported by the Open Knowledge Foundation in Germany, the Norman B. Leventhal City Prize, the Autodesk IDEA Studio Award, the MIT Presidential Fellowship, and the Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship, among others. Carlos received a PhD from MIT, a MS in Computation with distinction from MIT, a Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Research/Publication Highlights
Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, Prototype Fund. “Drawing Participation: Collectively Re-Blocking a Million Neighborhoods,” Principal Investigator, with Leonard Schrage.
MIT Norman B. Leventhal City Prize. “Drawing Together: Scalable Community Participation in Urban Design for Social and Ecological Resilience,” Co-Principal Investigator, with Nicholas de Monchaux (MIT), Miho Mazereeuw (MIT), and Green City Force.
Northeastern University, Tier 1 Grant. “Towards Cool and Carbon-Free Global South: Co-Principal Investigator, with Alpha Arsano and Matthew Eckelman (College of Engineering).
Northeastern University, Climate Justice & Sustainability Hub Grant Program. “Autonomous Sensing Technologies Towards Improving Community and Environmental Health.” Principal Investigator.
MIT Presidential Fellowship
Biennale Architettura, Venice, Italy, 2025. “Drawing Together,” with Nicholas de Monchaux (MIT), Reid Kovacs (MIT), and Jesus “Chucho” Ocampo (Northeastern).
Books (Under Contract, Expected 2026)
Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos. “Drawing Out the Computer Map: Computing and Community Participation in the Design of the Built Environment,” Design, Technology, and Society Series, Routledge
Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos. “Painting with Data: Visually based open-source tool for geo-computing.” Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 50, no. 9 (November 1, 2023): 2610–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083231193321.
Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos, Lillian Chin, Josefina Correa Menendez, Reid Kovacs, Calvin Zhong, and Nicholas de Monchaux. “Drawing Together: Technology Development for Public Service.” In Improving Technology Through Ethics, edited by Simona Chiodo, David Kaiser, Julie Shah, and Paolo Volonté, 65–82. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52962-7_6.
Painting with Data: Visually based open-source tool for geo-computing
Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, July 31, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083231193321.
Drawing Together: Computing for Scalable Community Participation in Urban Design
Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos, Zhong, Calvin, Chin, Lillian, de Monchaux, Nicholas. In: Next Generation Technology: Designing for the Common Good. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology. Springer.
“Drawing Together” is awarded Norman B. Leventhal City Prize: https://news.mit.edu/2022/drawing-together-awarded-norman-b-leventhal-city-prize-1020
Drawing Participation: A Real-Time, Peer-to-Peer Tool for Participatory Planning and Design
Local Software: Integrated Design and Geo-Computing Workflows for Urban Design
Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos, de Monchaux, Nicholas.
In: Proceedings of the Conference on Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management CUPUM 2023, Montreal, Canada
Imperative / Functional / Object-Oriented: an alternative ontology of programmatic paradigms for design. Steinfeld, Kyle, Sandoval Olascoaga, Carlos. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), Los Angeles, USA.
Departments
Architecture
Education
- Ph.D., Design and Computation, MIT
- M.S.,Computation, MIT
- M.Arch., UC Berkeley
- B.Arch., National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
Awards
- MIT Norman B. Leventhal City Prize
- MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Seed Award
- Autodesk IDEA Studio Award
- MIT Presidential Fellowship
- Arthur Rotch Special Prize
- Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship
- ULI Urban Design Competition Finalist
Research Focus
- HCI
- Design computing
- Geo-computing
- Collaborative computing
- Software engineering
- History of design technology
Courses Taught
- ARCH5310/SUEN6220, Design Tactics of Urban Computing
- ARCH 3450, Advanced Architectural Communication
- ARCH 3170, Architecture, Infrastructure & City
- INAM 5983, Design, Urban Tech + Community Participation