Kristina Kröll, MSc, is a joint Doctoral Candidate between the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her research focuses on developing design tools that support architects in working with reused building components. She investigates how digital methods, structured workflows and knowledge frameworks can reduce the practical and cognitive barriers associated with reuse, enabling more confident, creative and scalable circular design practices.

Her work adopts a critical and analytically grounded perspective that examines how architects navigate uncertainty, incomplete information and material constraints inherent to reuse. By combining qualitative inquiry—such as semi-structured interviews—with design strategy and comparative analysis, she explores how digital tools can be shaped around real-world design challenges rather than imposing abstract technical models.

Her collaboration with EPFL brings together expertise from architectural design, structural reuse methodologies and computational approaches, situating her research within an international framework and strengthening its methodological depth.

Currently, she is developing approaches that integrate reuse-specific data, design logic and process support into architectural workflows. Her aim is to help practitioners better interpret existing material stocks, assess design options more effectively and turn circular ambitions into tangible project outcomes. Through this work, she engages with broader questions of how architectural practice can adapt to changing material realities and the demands of more sustainable futures.

Kristina Kröll earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Architecture at the University of Wuppertal. During her studies, she worked for several years as a research assistant at the Chair of Structural Engineering and Construction, and she expanded her methodological and digital expertise through her research at the Immersive Visualization Lab at the University of Missouri (2018–2019).

From 2019 to 2023, she continued her research and teaching at the Chair of Structural Engineering and Construction, followed by a research position at the BIM Institute of the University of Wuppertal in 2023. Alongside her academic career, she gained extensive practical experience in architectural firms, including HPP Architects, Archi-Tectonics in New York, and agn Niederberghaus, providing her with insight into the realities of design processes and project implementation.

Her commitment to gender equality in engineering education was recognised with the Gendergelijkheidsprijs of the University of Wuppertal in 2024. She teaches in the course Research in Urbanism and Architecture II and maintains international collaborations across Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

With a combination of design practice, digital expertise and a reflective, critical approach to the challenges of circularity, Kristina Kröll brings a forward-looking perspective to the question of how architects can design more effectively with what already exists.