PROJECTS

AFJD is the design and research firm of Amber Frid-Jimenez and Joe Dahmen that uses sustainable methods to engage contemporary cultural issues. Our transdisciplinary approach engages advanced technology to create conceptually rigorous virtual and environmentally sustainable built environments. Our practice is eclectic and multidimensional, which reflects the changing culture of design and technology. We invent new processes and create social and political situations around the design of architecture, information design, and social media.

We have been working together for fifteen years. Much of that time we have been in Boston, where we stayed after finishing degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We recently relocated to Vancouver and travel back and forth to Norway and the Netherlands for research and projects.


Photo credit: David Niddrie

Amber Frid-Jimenez is an artist, awarding-winning designer and recently appointed Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her work focuses on the social mechanics of virtual and physical networks, and the role of design and technology produced under unstable conditions. Her current work focuses on the latent intersections between design, technology and contemporary art. Trained in design and media arts at the MIT Media Lab with a background in fine art and philosophy, her current and recent research and teaching affiliations include the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands, the MIT Program for Art, Culture and Technology, and the National Academy of Art & Design in Bergen, Norway.

Joe Dahmen trained as an architect at MIT and is an expert on sustainable building technology. He is an Assistant Professor of Design and Sustainability Integration at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, where he teaches design studios and building technology courses. He is also a Faculty Associate of the Peter Wall Institute. He has an Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Yung Ho Chang and 2008 MacArthur Fellow John Ochsendorf.