MOME Foundation Board of Trustees
Chair of the board of trustees of the Foundation for the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, 2026–27: a one-year, transitional mandate to guide the university back to full autonomy.
Adam Somlai-Fischer
Inventor, artist and technology entrepreneur.
As the Co-founder of Prezi.com, designer, media artist and aspiring musician, Adam Somlai-Fischer's passion lies in taming technologies to render them more humane and less boring, all while nurturing cross-disciplinary and intergenerational collaborations. His products and artworks have been used by 150 million users globally, and covered and presented internationally by Wired Magazine, New York Times, Financial Times, Fastcompany, Forbes, CNN, Bloomberg, Venice Biennale of Architecture, Transmediale Berlin, NTT/ICC Tokyo.
Adam has been on Financial Times' Europe’s top 50 tech entrepreneurs list, Winner of the World Technology Award (WTN, Time inc) in the category of Arts, Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA, and selected as one of top 50 emerging designers worldwide by International Design magazine.
2026–27: Chair of the Board of Trustees of the MOME Foundation (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest), a one-year mandate to guide the university's return to full autonomy.
Archive
A timeline of everything I made, back through the years.
2026
100 — Midsummer Night Concert at Leányfalu
For our combined hundredth birthday we celebrated Midsummer Night at Leányfalu with friends — and a small concert: Anna Rákóczy and Lajos Rozmán playing Sári and W.F. Bach, and my “musical reading” of Bach’s Chaconne.
Opening speech — Barabási: From the Formula to the Picture, Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle Budapest)
I gave the opening speech for Albert-László Barabási’s exhibition The Art of Dataism at the Műcsarnok — on Newton, Castel’s ocular harpsichord, network hubs, and why understanding must become personal.
Agentic Prezi
Fully agentic prezi let's you chat through your presentation, but also helps you engage your audience, your students, your team.
Válasz Online — The Next Sixteen Years (essay)
My essay for Válasz Online, April 2026: a rare historical window is opening — let us switch into creating mode. Full English translation on this page.
2025
Venice Biennale 2025
Our family exhibition in the Hungarian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale — Draw, Make, Code & Prezi.
hvg360 — a „Prezi család” a velencei építészeti biennálén
Interview with the whole family about the joint installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Featured in Constructing La Biennale (BarabásiLab), Venice 2025
I was honoured to be featured in this data visualisation of the history of the Biennale, as a four-time exhibitor — BarabásiLab’s 30-metre network installation on the Padiglione Centrale.
Performing with Móni Venczel at Fonó Budai Zeneház
Reharmonized Hungarian folk song and 2 jazz standards performed live with Móni Venczel at the Fonó, Budapest, September 2025.
2024
CUMULUS BUDAPEST 2024: Plenary Talk
Plenary talk at Cumulus Budapest, the large design education conference, 2024: Form is Past, Shaping is Future.
Beautiful Harmonies from 1782 — Jazz Guitar Rendition of Mozart’s D minor Fantasy
Jazz guitar rendition of Mozart’s Fantasy in D minor
2023
Panoptic Machine
Interactive installation of all existing images “It’s an interesting feeling to look and imagine that if we observed each image for an attosecond, even over the lifespan of the universe, we could only…
Whole-Brain Rhapsody
Experimental jazz concert with Ádám Bögöthy at the Madách 200 Festival — visualizing the musical spaces we improvise in, from Bach to Billie Eilish.
2021
DigiKult — interview by Szilvia Seres
Long interview on the path from tech optimism to sustainability and climate communication — Kitchen Budapest, Prezi and beyond.
„Miért kéne reformálni, ha a fizika törvényei nem változnak?!” — interview on architecture education
Interview by Júlia Pokol in Építészfórum on architecture education — the BME versus Stockholm, mindset, collaboration and what should change (2021, in Hungarian).
2020
Prezi Video
It’s you and your content together on screen — the easiest way to drive engagement in your hybrid and virtual meetings.
Augment our future?
BrainBar, Budapest, Hungary
Prezi - The Startup Journey
EUvsVirus, Prezi - The Startup Journey, Virtual
Válasz Online — „Előfordulhat, hogy ezek után jobb emberek leszünk”
Large pandemic-era interview on responsible technology use, remote work, distance learning and the family’s digital habits.
2019
Prezi A.R.
I have always been interested in, and experimenting with augmented reality, even as a young artist. At Prezi we have been looking into ways to bring similar experiences to widely available devices pe…
2018
Taking back Augmented reality from the Terminator
ARiA (AR in ACTION) MIT Media Lab, Boston, USA
2017
Adam Somlai-Fischer : Augmented Ideas: Taking back Augmented Reality from the Terminator
AWE - Augmented World Expo, Munich, Germany
Tech Open Air - Berlin, Germany
Taking Back Augmented Reality from The Terminator — talk at Tech Open Air, Berlin 2017 (video).
AR in ACTION, New York University, USA
Talk on Prezi’s adoption of augmented reality — AR in ACTION, New York University.
Demoing Prezi A.R. at TED Global, Vancouver, Canada
Prezi’s AR demo at the TED Conference, Vancouver, April 2017.
2016
Programozom, tehát vagyok (MET, 2016)
I code therefore I am (Hungarian)
BME Építőművészeti Doktori Iskola
Guest lecture in the BME DLA school’s design methodology course, at the invitation of Balázs Mihály.
Vasárnapi Hírek — A világ átalakítása
Interview on why programming should be taught as a joyful, liberating creative skill alongside reading and writing.
Management Today — 'I don't think we could have started in the Valley'
Interview on building Prezi from an artist’s personal tool in Budapest — and why it could not have started in Silicon Valley.
Bridge Budapest
We co-founded Bridge Budapest in 2016 with six other startup founders to build an ethical and inspiring entrepreneurial culture in Hungary. Peter Arvai is the chair of the association, and Veronika Pi…
2015
Nutshell
Nutshell was an iOS app that made it very simple to create short A.R. like stories using your phone. Take 3 pictures of the most interesting things around you, add comments / animations, and share it…
Building the Valley in Budapest
BrainBar, Budapest, Hungary
Kreativitás - hogyan és miért találjunk fel dolgokat?
How and why to invent things — Vírus Klub, Budapest (Hungarian).
Robotics for kids - Budapest Schools - Prezi workshop
Robotics/electronics workshop for small kids @ Prezi
The Next Web, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
On stage at The Next Web Conference 2015, Amsterdam.
Budapest School
Budapest School is a truly revolutionary school network for elementary education. We participated in the initial founding and are proud shareholders. Anita designed the first physical school for BPS.
2014
Aspen Annual Conference 2014, Prague, Czech Republic
Panelist on “Central Europe — New Reality, New Energy?” at the Aspen Annual Conference, Prague.
BpScienceMeetup
Talk about Prezi at BpScienceMeetup / Kutatók Éjszakája (Hungarian).
Budapest Local — Prezi: a Startup Fairy Tale from Budapest
Interview on Prezi’s origins as a personal zoomable presentation tool, and Budapest’s startup culture.
2013
The Secret of Creativity
The Secret of Creativity, Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
CNBC — Internet makes you global
CNBC video interview on Hungary’s startup environment and Prezi’s international investment.
2012
CreativeMornings HQ, Budapest, Hungary
Full talk at CreativeMornings Budapest, January 2012.
Merre van az arra? Creative self-management | Ernst Múzeum
Lecture on creative self-management at the Ernst Múzeum, April 2012 (Hungarian).
Zárora — interview by Alinda Veiszer
Long-form television interview by Alinda Veiszer — Zárora, Hungary.
2011
Frontiers of Interaction 2011
Frontiers of Interaction, Florence, Italy
Propaganda — television feature, Hungary
Television feature — Propaganda, Hungary.
CNBC Business — “Prophet of Zoom”
CNBC Business magazine profile by Kester Eddy: “Can this Hungarian artist’s software really breathe life into any corporate presentation?”
2010
ETHZ, Zurich
Lecture at ETH Zürich, July 2010 — recorded on video.
Media Architecture Biennale, Vienna, Austria
Conference speaker at the Media Architecture Biennale 2010, Künstlerhaus Wien.
2009
Panoramic Wifi Camera (NTT ICC Tokyo 2009, Transmediale 2010)
Panoramic Wifi Camera creates a live panoramic image of a space seen through Wifi radio and other 2.4 GHz radio signals – how they bounce back from the architecture, composing an image, just as light would do.
Prezi.com
Prezi is a nonlinear presentation editor, with a very intuitive interface and support for online sharing. With the help of Prezi you can create dynamic and visually structured zooming presentations using texts, videos, d…
2008
Reconfigurable House 2.0 @ Z33
The Reconfigurable House is an environment constructed from thousands of low tech components that can be “rewired” by visitors. The project is a critique of ubiquitous computing “smart homes”, which are based on the idea…
Reconfigurable House 1.0 @ NTT/ICC
The Reconfigurable House is an environment constructed from thousands of low tech components that can be “rewired” by visitors. The project is a critique of ubiquitous computing “smart homes”, which are based on the idea…
Sorry for taking your mirrors - Venice Biennale of Architecture, curated exhibition
Exhibition about our work, methodologies, collaborations, and some actual experiments.
Wifi Camera in Beijing and Dortmund
“Wifi Camera reveals the electromagnetic space of our devices and the shadows that we create within such spaces, in particular our wifi networks which are increasingly found in coffee shops, offices and homes throughout…
Royal College of Art, London — Kitchen Budapest and Peer Property’s Tangible Beauty
By allowing a diverse community to participate in the making of technology systems, new kinds of tangible beauty emerge — RCA London, May 2008.
Toy Hacking Workshop with Tinker.it, London
Toy hacking workshop with Tinker.it at the Bartlett, London — opening cheap electronic toys to build new interactions.
hvg.hu — Bocs a tükrökért
hvg.hu on the Hungarian architect invited to the Venice Biennale’s central pavilion: who is Somlai-Fischer and why does this invitation matter? (In Hungarian.)
2007
BlueSpot
All mobile phone users have the opportunity to reach a friend almost anywhere and anytime. However, apart from the traditional use of our phones, we have other opportunities as well to communicate with our environment. B…
Bartlett School of Architecture — Aether lecture (2007)
Aether Architecture lecture in the Bartlett International Lecture Series — Darwin Lecture Theatre, UCL, November 2007.
Reorient: The Grand Baldachin
Departing from Reorient, our installation for the 2006 Architecture Biennale in Venice , we have transformed the building of the Hungarian Institute in Paris with material we recycled from the Venice show, and added some…
Pimp my Gadget
Pimp my Gadget - hardware hacking workshop @ Kitchen Budapest with Massimo Banzi
School of Architecture and io1.0, Rome
Low-tech sensors and actuators workshop at Rome Design Week & University of Rome.
IUAV, Venice
Low-tech workshop at IUAV University, School of Architecture, Venice.
Domus Academy, Milan
Low-tech workshop at Domus Academy, Milan.
Digicult — Real Spaces, Virtual Spaces (interview by Marco Mancuso)
Interview by Marco Mancuso on aether architecture — Digicult, Italy.
Kitchen Budapest
Kitchen Budapest, opened in June 2007, is a new media lab for young researchers who are interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space and are passionate about creating experime…
2006
A world inside-out
Inverted World — proposal for the Budapest Municipality’s “Atlantisz” competition (aether architecture, 2006): a lenticular-print installation opening the floor of the Nyugati underpass onto Budapest’s hidden faces. (Text in Hungarian.)
Aleph Reorganizing Vision
Aleph is an experimental public display, that is using the spaces, people and objects it faces as a palette to display messages from hidden viewpoints. When looking at a small mirror, it reflects a fraction of the space…
Induction House - Distributed Projection Structure
Distributed Projection Structure is an architecture prototype where physical matter is animated by algorithmic light. Testing the limits of architectural constructions reaching the precision and resolution of media as we…
Ping Genius Loci
Genius Loci stands for the spirit of the place, a common phrase in architecture for the poetic context, for the cultural reading of a site. Ping, the most basic command in computer networking, is a sort of greeting among…
Reorient
Reorient at the Venice Biennale of Architecture was a big success, already got further invitations.
Scattered House - London Festival of Architecture
Scattered House is an architectural experiment founded on a truly contemporary notion of space, where issues of ubiquitous connectivity, family diasporas, design-by-occupant, and public control technology come together i…
Wifi Camera
Wifi Camera reveals the electromagnetic space of our devices and the shadows that we create within such spaces, in particular our wifi networks which are increasingly found in coffee shops, offices and homes throughout c…
Interaction design workshop, Domus Academy, Milan, Italy
Low-tech workshop at Domus Academy + Ivrea Interaction Design, Milan.
Mal au Pixel, exhibition and seminar, Paris, France
Ping Genius Loci shown at Mal au Pixel, Paris.
Goldsmith College, department of design, London
Low-tech workshop at Goldsmiths College design department, London.
We Make Money Not Art — interview by Régine Debatty
Interview about aether architecture and low-tech media art by Régine Debatty, 2006.
2005
Avenue of Cars
Proposal to create a giant conveyor belt to replace the highly overloaded motorways alongside the Danube in Budapest. A traffic jam is a pseudo-social space, people are close to each other and are forced to spend time to…
BrainMirror
BrainMirror is an interactive experience where the image of the visitors brain appears mixed with his/her mirror image, using natural head movement as an interface to explore volumetric visuals of the human brain.
Budapest Heat
While roaming in Europe, Budapest Heat regularly receives SMS messages to stay updated on the current temperature in Budapest, then tries to apply this temperature to its local environment.
Lowtech Sensors and Actuators
This report describes the results of a collaborative research project to develop a suite of low-tech sensors and actuators that might be useful for artists and architects working with interactive environments. With this…
Dorkbot Budapest
Presented low-tech sensors and actuators at the first Dorkbot Budapest, November 2005.
Matchmaking festival, Trondheim, Norway
Presenter at Trondheim Matchmaking 2005 (TEKS), Norway.
Crystalpunk workshop for soft architecture, Utrecht, The Netherlands talk outline
Presenter at the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture, Utrecht.
Maker’s Fair, O’Reilly European Open Source Convention, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Low Tech at Maker Faire, O’Reilly European Open Source Convention, Amsterdam, October 2005.
2004
BaseBubbles
Concept for mobile phone users mapping the city by logging adjacent cell IDs, and building public services on top…
Dymaxion Map
Flash implementation of Buckminster Fuller's concept
Fractal Bubble Taxonomies
The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) created an ambitious project where the new achievements of bio-research are presented to the general public in a non scientific language.
Heat wells
Concept for public wells that heat and cool pools of water to match the temperature of remote seas and lakes. more soon…
Induction House - at the Biennale
Induction House — low-tech media architecture shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale: distributed projection structures, fish-tank interfaces and DIY media façades. The full project site is preserved below.
NDA - Social Search
The purpose of NDA (National Digital Repository) is to organize and make Hungarian cultural content from public and private collections available for the public.
Media Embodiment Workshop
Media Embodiment workshop — physical, embodied interfaces built with media technology students, KTH Stockholm, spring 2004.
Induction House at ISEA2004 conference, Helsinki
Induction House by AETHER (Nagy, Pozna & Somlai-Fischer) presented at ISEA2004, Helsinki.
Konstfack, University College for arts and design, Stockholm
Interaction design workshop at Konstfack with Jonas Öquist — students hacked toys into new social interactions, Stockholm 2004.
2003
Induction House - Fishing Kit
A 300X300X600 cm self-tensioned structure made out of fishing rods, plastic strings, lead weights, lambing gums and metal rings. As projection surface we used double-folded cash register paper rolls that were hanging in…
Induction House - Fishtank
Aether induction house is an architecture prototype looking into ways of treating digital media as physical matter.
Kinetic Shadows
Kinetic Shadows — interactive shading benches proposed for the streets of Athens during the 2004 Olympics, with the Smart Studio.
Mobile expressions
Prototypes for expressive interfaces for public use of mobile phones. As these phones function as part of our personal expressions today, why not develop an interaction language which can be spectacular as well?
Open Source Architecture Performance
Qualities of virtual spaces are building up social conditions that architecture should respond to, the actual gets blurred with the virtual, local with the global, and our perception of space and architecture is going th…
Remote Home Prototype
The RemoteHome will be one place of living in two distant cities: London and Berlin. Communication and media technologies are creating new scenarios of sharing situations of friendship and intimacy over distance. The ris…
Interaction Hacking
One-week workshop where first-year design students hacked electronic toys to create new social interactions — Konstfack, Stockholm.
Memory Scan
Memory Scan Installation at magasin - Vienna Kerstin Nigsch and Adam Somlai-Fischer 25 February 2003
New Biology
Fractal based cellular structure for genetic biology
Outside In — Kowloon workshop
We departed from looking at Kowloon Walled City, a unique phenomenon of non-governmental territory between British Hong Kong and communist China, that flourished in the second half of the last century. Its modernistic ho…
VMaV — visual media course at KTH
"Imagination (old/new): A term which today has a totally different, even opposite meaning. The "old imagination" is the ability to make images of (external or internal") circumstances, and the converse ability to recogni…
2002
Dance Backpack
Biofeedback instrument mediating music to dance. A backpack, that turns the dance of the person wearing it into music. We have tested and documented on 20 people from the streets of Vienna and Budapest.
Heart of Budapest
In his “Invisible cities“, Italo Calvino mentions the town Marozia, where spatial splits have been opened in some unexpected moments(1). Through these holes there is another city’s actual sight can be seen. Similarly, th…
Mediated Spaces - MSc Architecture
The social habits for an architecture as media are already existing with the use of mobile phones, Internet, and so on. This condition makes these issues relevant for architects, looking into how material qualities can b…
Responsive Octopus Navigation
A virtual structure designed through physical modelling, by informing the virtual with qualities of a physical model. The structure is responsive, it is aware of the visitors presence and redefines its geometry
A+URL — Architecture + Urban Research Laboratory
Assistant teacher at A+URL, the postgraduate architecture + urban research programme at KTH Stockholm, from 2002.
Communicative Spaces
Introductory design course for media technology students at KTH Stockholm — portals, installations and an exhibition, 2002.
Kis Péter Architects — website
Navigation design of the official website of Kis Péter Architects office in Budapest.
Learning Lab Installation
Interactive installation for a learning lab — showers of words and images triggered by visitors, KTH Stockholm, spring 2002.
Meta L Hyttan
Meta L Hyttan Digital Model for an interactive media installation developed by the SMART studio at the Interactive Institute, Stockholm 2002
Poiesis of Spaces
Poiesis of Spaces — course on poetic, mediated spaces for media technology students, KTH Stockholm, 2002.
PoP — Project or Proposal
PoP (Project or Proposal) — five-week summer architecture course at KTH Stockholm, 2002.
Screen Threshold
Reality: What we perceive as reality is a tiny detail from the field of possibilities surging around us, which our nervous system has realized through computation. If all reality is a computation from possibilities, then…
2001
Mobius Space for Miralles-Tagliabue
A text composed by displacement. The history of a travel. Discover the dynamics of the spiral, moving around of an interior landscape, always getting further from the centre and returning to the principles. Advance in th…
Satellite Algorithms
Satellite Algorithms Fictional entity playing complexity science Adam Somlai-Fischer, A+Url 2001 fall
2000
Nagyszikla — Budapest Zoo rock reconstruction
Architectural Design Competition with Peter Kis architect First prize
1998
Vertical Park
The vertical rainstructure penetrated by volumes of light creates rainbow. The space of the refracted light, a zone whose soft limits could be percepted through the vanishing color bows... Peter Sandor Nagy & Adam Somlai Fischer competition entry for Shinkenchiku architecture competition