Austin Lightle is a digital artist and architectural designer whose work explores the evolving relationship between technology and the built environment. His research investigates how digital interfaces shape architectural production, standardizing design through language, tools, and assumptions about program, scale, and function. Early inquiries examined how these systems codify architectural norms, often limiting creative agency.
More recently, Austin has turned his attention to the ecological consequences of digital waste generated by architects. He explores how data-driven construction has led to the proliferation of data centers, one of the most rapidly built typologies globally, often with minimal architectural intervention. In response, his work proposes a framework for up-cycling architecture, both physically and digitally. Rather than treating buildings and archives as endpoints, he reimagines them as beginnings, embracing an ethos of “again” over “end.”
Through animation, Austin uses digital waste as both medium and message, crafting speculative narratives that invite non-architects into the conversation. Animation becomes a tool for rewriting defaults, revealing new imaginaries, and reflecting on the social and environmental stakes of architectural production.
Austin holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from The Ohio State University and a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
