ARCHITECTURE · COMPUTATION · MAKING

Timo Kapsalis

I design, build, and teach at the meeting point of architecture, computation, and making.
My research turns generative AI, immersive media, and digital fabrication into methods others can use. I work across the studio, the laboratory and the city; alongside students, industry, and communities.

Based Derby, UK
Role Lecturer, School of Architecture
Focus Housing · Adaptive Reuse · Material Culture
View the work
SELECTED WORK

Portfolio

Portrait of Timo Kapsalis
DERBY, 2026
ABOUT

Timo Kapsalis

I am an architectural and computational designer by profession; I teach and research at the seam between the two.

I studied in Greece and Sweden, then spent five years in London studios. At Assemble I learned that architecture is made through co-creation and digital/analogue fabrication as much as drawing. At Tonkin Liu I was brought in for the parametric-design work, and for making it legible to everyone else through real- time environments and VR. A knowledge transfer partnership with Motionspot showed me how little of what architects produce reaches disabled users. That gap became my doctorate. Funded by Hitachi UK, it worked with more than fifty mobility-disabled participants to build AI tools for co-designing inclusive environments. The resulting paper on “Disabled-by-design” environments has been cited over two hundred times.

I now work as a Lecturer in Architectural Design and lead two undergraduate programmes (BA Architecture; BA Interior Architecture) at the University of Derby. I act as Co-Investigator on the DUST Project, a £1.7m participatory placemaking initiative, funded largely by Toyota. I am the Director of the Osborne Lab for Digital Design where we experiment with analogue and digital tools for fabrication (laser-cutting, 3D printing) and design communication (VR, game engines). I have co-founded the “Derby Academy of Architects”, a consortium of over 50 architecture practitioners and academics, which exists to close the distance between how architecture is taught and practised in the region. As Head of AI Adoption for the Built Environment Department, I design both the tools and the staff training that bring generative AI into everyday teaching, from large language models embedded in our virtual learning environments to agentic systems built for subject-specific tasks.

13 Years teaching
24 Built & competition projects
11 Published papers
Download full CV (PDF)
PUBLICATIONS

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed research across inclusive design, generative AI, computational design, and urban analysis.

301 Citations
7 Publications
4 h-index
  1. 2022 Disabled-by-design: effects of inaccessible urban public spaces on users of mobility assistive devices — a systematic review E Kapsalis, N Jaeger, J Hale Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 2022
    Journal Article Inclusive Design
    226 Cited
  2. 2023 Generative AI for immersive experiences: Integrating text-to-image models in VR-mediated co-design workflows C Bussell, A Ehab, D Hartle-Ryan, T Kapsalis International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2023
    Conference Paper Generative AI VR
    38 Cited
  3. 2024 UrbanGenAI: Reconstructing urban landscapes using panoptic segmentation and diffusion models T Kapsalis, S Basbas arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.14379, 2024
    Preprint Urban Design Diffusion Models
    21 Cited
  4. 2024 CADgpt: Harnessing natural language processing for 3D modelling to enhance computer-aided design workflows T Kapsalis arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.05476, 2024
    Preprint NLP CAD
    15 Cited
  5. 1 Cited
  6. 2026 Towards responsible use of visual generative AI (GenAI) for co-designing urban spaces: a case study from Derby, UK T Kapsalis, C Bussell, D Hartle-Ryan, B McCarthy Journal of Urban Design, 2026
    Journal Article Generative AI Urban Design
    New
  7. 2026 Gen-AI-tecture: using generative AI to support architectural students in design tasks T Kapsalis arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.21361, 2026
    Preprint Generative AI Design Education
    New
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GET IN TOUCH

Let's talk about
a project, a course,
or a collaboration.

For academic inquiries, research collaborations, thesis supervision, or industry partnerships, please get in touch directly via email or visit the department at the University of Derby.

Academic Unit College of Science and Engineering
School of Built and Natural Environment
Research Centre Zero Carbon Transport, Smart Cities, and Built Environments Research Centre
Campus Kedleston Road and Markeaton Street, Derby Campus