Jerome Arul

Jerome Arul is a Singaporean designer and educator whose work examines how technology and nature inform each other. He has developed products ranging from water filters to rocket stoves and patented systems and methods in insulation and solar technology. He managed engineering and product design at EcoZoom and scaled up production of the Tubeho Neza cookstove program in Rwanda, enabled by the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism. EcoZoom’s products have been distributed by the World Food Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Relief International.

In Spatial Dynamics, Arul and his students practice methods of making iteratively, examining how simple rules produce complex dynamic forms; reflecting on the way plants grow, water moves, or how carbon is structured. Arul co-taught a collaborative studio on Product Design and Development with Professor Maria Yang at the MIT School of Engineering and Professor Steven Eppinger at the Sloan School of Management. He has taught shop courses such as Metals Two and Digital Fabrication and advanced studios including Design for Impact and The World Game. At the MIT D-Lab, he co-taught the program’s core design studio with Sorin Grama, during which D-Lab was recognized with a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Born in Singapore, Arul’s formative experiences in Mumbai, Geneva, Nairobi, and Shanghai have shaped his practice. His talk The Hubris of Design, drawn from reflections working in global development, was featured as a keynote by Swissnex Boston with FHNW Academy of Art and Design Basel and at ISPOD, the International Symposium on Product Design. He is the principal of Proto Roboto, an underground studio and fabrication shop in Riverside, RI.