ADATO

Dr. Nikolas Ettel is an intermedia researcher exploring the frontiers of digital innovation and cultural heritage. He is currently an Associate Curator at the University Museum and Art Gallery, where he oversees the digitization of its art collection. He founded ZweixZwei Studio Ltd., a Hong Kong-based creative lab specializing in emerging technologies, currently involved in a mixed-disciplinary, government-funded research project to digitize the remnants of a once-thriving logging industry in Yam O Wan, Hong Kong. His research has been featured in a TEDx talk (2021) and has been exhibited and published internationally. Nik's recent exhibition, Alleys in Wonderland (PMQ, 2019; City Gallery, 2021), is a Design Trust Seed Grant-awarded VR project that explores creative back-alley occupations in the Greater Bay Area. The project was displayed at the Hong Kong Pavilion for the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.

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Born in Vienna, he received his BArch from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a Master of Arts (Architectural History) from The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and a Doctor of Technical Sciences for his dissertation “The Jacksons Project: An Intermedia Framework to Analyse Trivial Yet Telling Urban Remnants in Hong Kong’s High-Density Built Environment,” from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He holds an ir.Arch from The Austrian Chamber of Commerce and has practiced in architectural offices in Vienna and Munich on large-scale data centers. Since 2018, he has been an editorial board member of ADATO. He is also a Fellow of Advance Higher Education and the director of an annual Students’ Short Film Festival at Tai Kwun.