Nicolay Boyadjiev

Nicolay Boyadjiev is an architect, strategist and educator working between Montreal and Moscow. He is currently a Faculty and the Program Design & Education tutor at Strelka Institute. He co-curates and co-runs the experimental postgraduate education program of the institute, currently planned as a cumulative 3-year “speculative urbanism think-tank” over 3 cycles until 2022. Each cycle, the program hosts an interdisciplinary and international cohort of 30 researchers for a 5-month immersive, led in short intense bursts by visiting various faculties from around the world and culminating in original design-research provocations in the form of cinematic outcomes, written proposals and design decks. He co-runs The Terraforming: a postgraduate interdisciplinary design-research think-tank developing work at the intersection of ecological governance, planetary urbanisation, and critical design theory. The Terraforming is directed by design theorist Benjamin Bratton and is premised on an investigation of the terraforming that has already taken place on Earth over the last century/millennia over the course of urbanisation (“the climate change we now have”), to the terraforming that must now be planned and conducted as a planetary design initiative of the next century if true catastrophes are to be prevented (“the climate change we now need”). Pragmatically, the program explores the implications of this proposition for design practice and urbanism at planetary scale. Boyadjiev is also a co-editor of the forthcoming book The New Normal (2020), a comprehensive record of the projects, processes and insights developed during the previous design-research cycle at Strelka designed to explore and prototype new models for urban design practice combining software, cinema, strategy, and planning. He lectures regularly at various institutions across Europe and North America, and is a visiting academic faculty at IAAC in Barcelona (Masters of City and Technology) and KADK in Copenhagen (Masters in Urbanism and Societal Change). Nicolay holds a Masters of Architecture from McGill University and prior to joining Strelka has worked at internationally renowned design offices ranging from boutique experimental studios to larger architecture firms.