Ján Pernecký
Architect, computational designer, and software developer operating worldwide. His work sits at the intersection of constraint-based algorithms, discrete assembly, and architectural fabrication. He has been building tools for Grasshopper for approximately 17 years and working with Wave Function Collapse implementations since 2020.
He co-founded Subdigital, a computational design studio (2016-2022), and served as CTO of a computational design company in the building industry, where he led development of hierarchical constraint satisfaction systems, multi-objective optimization engines, and domain-specific solvers (2022-2025). He created and ran rese arch - a computational design education platform active from 2015 to 2022, producing 150+ hours of course material used at universities across Europe. He was curator of the Slovak and Czech Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale (2012).
Together with Ján Tóth, he is the creator of Monoceros - a Grasshopper plug-in implementing Wave Function Collapse for discrete architectural assembly. Monoceros has accumulated over 22,000 downloads on Food4Rhino and is the only architectural WFC implementation of its kind.
Teaching
University & academic
- Academy of Architecture Amsterdam - Master Thesis Supervisor (2023-2024)
- Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto - Guest Lecturer (2023)
- The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL - B-Pro Workshop (2021-2022)
- Universität für angewandte Kunst Vienna / Studio Lynn - Workshop (2021)
- IAAC / MRAC, Barcelona - Software Course (2020)
- UMPRUM Prague - Studio Teaching (2019-2020)
- Faculty of Architecture, VUT Brno - Visiting Professor (2017)
Workshops & online education
- DigitalFUTURES - Workshop (2020)
- Monoceros Online Workshop / arx.ace - 30+ hour intensive, jury: Gilles Retsin (2021) (details)
- rese arch Sessions - Grasshopper courses (2015-2022)
Research & publications
Books
- Project Monoceros. Subdigital, Bratislava, 2021. Research publication documenting the development of the Monoceros WFC solver, theoretical foundations, and application experiments by studios at UMPRUM and beyond. Read online
- “Exuberance and Evolutionary Method.” In Kompaktní město, pp. 6-35. 4AM Forum, Brno, 2012. ISBN 978-80-905149-0-4.
Academic context
Monoceros has been cited and used in graduate research at UMPRUM Prague, Universität für angewandte Kunst Vienna (Studio Hani Rashid), and other institutions. Student projects developed using the plug-in were reviewed by Gilles Retsin (UCL Bartlett / ETH Zürich) at the 2021 Monoceros Online Workshop.
If you use Monoceros in academic work, please cite it and let us know at info@monoceros.tools.
Consulting
Ján takes a limited number of consulting engagements. Areas of expertise:
- Wave Function Collapse implementation and adaptation for spatial design
- Constraint satisfaction system design for spatial and product applications
- Grasshopper plug-in development (C#, .NET, Rhino 7/8)
- Discrete assembly logic and prefabrication-aware design workflows
- Computational design curriculum development and team training