JOEL LÓPEZ
7 years of work across Ecuador, and the Nordics in Denmark and Sweden, building AI-driven computational design workflows for the built environment, and founder of Sweden Design Computing.
Joel trained as an architect at the Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador, graduating in 2018. That same year, he was a Hult Prize Regional Finalist at the Hult International Business School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, taking his own social enterprise concept, MixMeat, through market validation and business model development to a live pitch before international investors and entrepreneurs. He then worked as a project architect and builder at Planhouse in Cuenca, Ecuador, gaining direct experience across design and construction.
He was later awarded a Swedish Institute Scholarship for Global Professionals, a highly competitive award (roughly a 4% acceptance rate) covering full tuition and living costs, to pursue an MSc in Sustainable Urban Design at Lund University.
Joel has since built his career in the Nordics at LINK Arkitektur, first as a Computational Design Consultant from Copenhagen, Denmark, developing early-phase computational methods, Revit and ArchiCAD BIM workflows, and pedestrian wind comfort CFD methodology, and later as a Computational Design Specialist and Architect within LINK IO, the firm's multinational digital development group based in Malmö, Sweden. Over this time he has advised more than 90 projects in urban development and sustainability, generating upwards of 750,000 NOK in environmental design report revenue. His work has spanned Lierstranda Fjordbyen, Norway's largest urban development project at 940,000 m² and 16,000 future residents, where he applied parametric urban modelling to test and benchmark massing alternatives in real time; a collaboration with Snøhetta on Kringkastern, an international competition entry for NRK's new Oslo headquarters shortlisted among three finalists, ultimately won by a team of Nordic, Arup, and Rodeo, with Joel and Snøhetta's entry also competing against a team from Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and AART; and the life-cycle analysis behind the Arctic Center of Energy in Skellefteå, which went on to win Swedish Environmental Building of the Year 2025 at the highest Miljöbyggnad Guld certification alongside NollCO2.
This work on Digital Reassembly, a submitted EU Horizon proposal on reassembly and re-use of building components, was carried out through LINK Arkitektur, not yet through SDC, representing LINK alongside White Arkitekter, with Joel leading the Platform Development working package across 13 partners in 7 EU and EEA countries, coordinated by Lund University. It's exactly the kind of research and academia collaboration SDC is now positioned to take on directly.
Joel regularly teaches and speaks on computational design: as an Expert Advisor on the Regenerative Building Design research project FRESH, for Chalmers and Lund University, through guest lectures on digital workflows at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and KADK Royal Academy in Copenhagen, presenting a tech workshop alongside Henning Larsen at the AEC Hackathon Copenhagen hosted at Bloxhub, and as a Rhino expert speaker in Thornton Tomasetti's Outdoor Comfort seminar series with SimScale.
Since 2023, he has run Sweden Design Computing alongside that work, creating a strong Computational Design Community by co-organizing several events with partners such as opensource.construction in Malmö (2025), and most notably with McNeel Europe, with 3 Rhino Developer Meetings in Copenhagen (2024), Stockholm (2025), and Barcelona (2026). SDC has grown a specialized AEC community of 600+ professionals across the Nordic, European, and American continent markets.
