Salmaan Craig
Associate Professor
Salmaan Craig, Eng.D., is a building scientist, architectural educator, and an Associate Professor at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, where he is also the founding director of gradientLAB. He was previously an Assistant Professor then Associate Professor at McGill University School of Architecture and, before that, a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also spent several years in practice, first as a façade engineer at Buro Happold and then in the Specialist Modelling Group at Foster + Partners, contributing to Masdar Institute, Apple Campus, and Bloomberg Headquarters.
Founded in 2026, gradientLAB is a multidisciplinary research center within UCLA’s Architecture and Urban Design Department. It explores the relationships between architecture, climate, and cognition. One focus is how architecture can perform thermodynamic work, using geometry and material physics instead of refrigerants and fossil fuels. Another focus is how architecture can pull people’s cognitive levers, shaping their thermal preferences and wellbeing in a warming world.
Related topics |
Sustainability, Technology |
Education
| BSc, Product Design, Brunel University |
| EngD, Environmental Technology, Brunel University |