Marcelo Spina is the founder and principal of PATTERNS, a Design Research architectural practice based in Los Angeles. With completed projects in South America, Asia and the US, PATTERNS pursues a materialist architecture of sensitive form and subtle intensity. Spina has received several design awards including the third prize in the 2003 Young Architect of the Year Award. A full-time faculty member at SCI-Arc since 2001, Spina has lectured extensively in a number of institutions worldwide; he has been a visiting professor at the Technical University of Innsbruck in Austria, and has also taught at the National University of Rosario and the Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. PATTERNS projects have been published internationally in books and magazines including Next Generation Architecture - Folds Blobs and Boxes and Sessions. In 2004, PATTERNS work was part of the SFMOMA exhibit "Glamour: Creating Affluence, Metamorph" at the Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy, and the Beijing Biennale in China.