Andrew Saunders is an Associate Professor of Architecture at PennDesign and founding principal of Andrew Saunders Architecture + Design, an internationally published, award winning architecture, design and research practice committed to the tailoring of innovative digital methodologies to provoke novel exchange and reassessment of the broader cultural context. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arkansas and a Masters in Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.  He has taught and guest lectured at a variety of institutions, including Cooper Union and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and, most recently, he was Assistant Professor of Architecture & Head of Graduate Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. 

Andrew’s current research project Baroque Topologies explores the evolution of the central plan typology in Italian Baroque Architecture beginning in Rome and advanced in Torino and the Piedmont region of northern Italy.  Although the churches are some of the most famous Italian Baroque examples in the world, existing documentation and as-built conditions are remarkably still under-represented.   Andrew has personally surveyed and amassed an unprecedented archive of complete LIDAR scan surveys of over twenty of the most important centrally planned Baroque church interiors.  He is working with the DH Price Lab to develop a novel workflow for analyzing and post-processing the large amounts of scan data in preparation of an international traveling exhibition and book publication.  The process provokes re-assessment of the Baroque in the era of big-data exploring novel digital analysis, representation and aesthetic techniques.