by Lenia Mascha
Lenia Mascha is a practicing architect and artist, based in Vienna, Austria. In her work, she engages with creative computation and robotic production techniques and explores their far-reaching potential across architecture, design, and the arts.
Lenia Mascha's work with algorithmic design and machine drawing builds on the realization of the shared nature between drawing and the art of weaving. Beyond metaphor and inspiration, her artistic approach draws parallels with a craft understood as the historical predecessor of both algorithmic art and automation. Drawing, like weaving, transitions with the use of automated machines from handcraft to mechanized craft and reveals its rule-based logic of composition. As the robotic arm travels with a marker on a cartesian grid, vertical lines create the warp threads and dashed marks follow the logic of weft interlacing around them. This process aims to produce drawings that appear interculturally familiar, mechanically crafted, and tactile. Reflections on color, texture, and pattern can enhance the effects of fabric structure. By bringing textile thinking to the fore, further critical trajectories on the intertwined relationship of technology and the arts, mathematics and craftsmanship, labor and gender emerge.
Lenia studied architecture in Berlin, Vienna, and Thessaloniki and holds a master’s degree in Architecture from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a postgraduate master of science in Urban Strategies from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Between 2016 and 2024, she taught architectural design at the master’s level at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the teaching team of architect Hani Rashid and subsequently architect Greg Lynn, and previously at the Institute of Urban Design of the University of Innsbruck, in the teaching team of architect Peter Trummer. She has organized numerous computational design workshops and is currently conducting artistic research on the acoustic potential of building skins and sound ornaments. Lenia is a practicing architect and since 2015 a member of the architectural team of Berger+Parkkinen Architects in Vienna, where she has contributed to the design and realization of internationally awarded civic buildings, in Europe and the Middle East.
Tracing the Line
The Art of Drawing Machines and Pen Plotters
"The use of pen plotters and other drawing machines has re-emerged as an important part of the contemporary generative and digital art scene. Tracing the Line showcases the work of 11 pioneers of generative art, alongside more than 100 contemporary artists who use these machines in their creative practices."
By Vetro Editions & Generative Hut
Reposition Nr.2
Journal of Reflective Positions in Art & Research
SoundCape. Combating Environmental Noise in Urban Areas.
By Lenia Mascha & Sophie Luger (2024)
Publisher University of Applied Arts Vienna
Re:Action
Urban Resilience, Sustainable Growth, and the Vitality of Cities and Ecosystems on the Post-Information Age
Ec(o)centric Form,
by Lenia Mascha (2023)
Edited by Hani Rashid
Edition Angewandte
INTERLACE (2024)
GALERIE DATA
26, boulevard Jules Ferry Paris 11
The exhibition INTERLACE explores the boundaries of multi-colored plotter-based drawing, delving into the step-by-step and layered creation of patterns whose texture evokes weaving principles. The artists featured in this duo show distinguish themselves through unique approaches.
Silver Lining (2023)
Brass Monkey
Vienna, Austria
Currently on show at Gumpendorfer Str. 71/5 1060 Vienna
SoundCape
Wanderlust. Sharing of things resonante (2022)
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacheralle 2-4, 1020 Vienna,
Encountering Research Projects of the Angewandte SoundCape’s contribution to the Wanderlust exhibition in the framework of the Angewandte Festival showcases the first phase of the research work conducted by Sophie Luger and Lenia Mascha at the Institute of Architecture in the time between February and June 2022.
Learn more about our artistic research here
