Complessità — Experience Design →
Museum of Ice Cream: Hiatus — Experience & Game Design →
Irvine × Andy Cavatorta Studio — Creative Technology →
Immigration Co/Lab × TFI — Curation & Program Facilitation →
Delirious Things — Interactive Installation →
Microculture Game × MIT Media Lab — Game Design →
Powers Of: Duration — Biotech & Product Design →

Roula is an experience designer whose work spans interactive installations, games, UX/UI design & web development.

She employs new technologies to challenge traditional narratives, merging the physical with the digital and design with science. Her approach delves into complex themes such as emotions, behaviors, and the cultural implications of emerging technologies.Her work has been showcased at events including Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, American Museum of Natural History, and Roma Europa Festival.

Her professional journey includes roles as a creative technologist, working as an experience & game design consultant for the Museum of Ice Cream, and collaborating with labs such as MIT Media Lab, Tribeca Interactive, Red Bull Austria, and Andy Cavatorta Studio. Her expertise in crafting digital experiences has led to partnerships with international brands in the hospitality, lifestyle, fashion, and design sectors, as well as collaborations with branding design studios to deliver sustainable digital solutions.

She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut (2011) and a MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School in New York (2015).

Co-founder of mérou studio, a Paris-based creative studio specialising in digital design and interactive experiences.
Complessità
Roma Europa Festival — Rome2019↗
Re:Humanism Art Prize — Rome2019↗
Immigration Co/Lab
Tribeca Film Institute Interactive — New York2017↗
Microculture Game
AMNH SciCafe — New York2017↗
Complessità
Digital Design Days — Milan2017↗
50th Architecture AUB
Exhibition and Symposium — AUB 2018↗
Artist Fellowship
Eyeo Festival — Minneapolis2018↗
Complessità
Tribeca Film Festival — New York2016↗
Creative Tech Week — New York2016↗
Microculture Game
SXSW — Austin2015↗
Dislocated
The Temporary Agency — Chashama, New York2014↗
Duration
NYC Media Lab Annual Summit2014↗
UFA
3D Mapping Competition — Beirut2010↗
Re:humanism / Complessità
Re:humanism Art Prize 2020 — Medium2020↗
DIGITALIVE19 — Arshake2019↗
Wanted in Rome — October Issue2019↗
Rehumanism: the exhibition — Insideart2019↗
Digitalive New Edition — Insideart2019↗
Re:humanism Art Prize 2019↗
Complessità
The Artist and the Algorithm — Nero Editions2019↗
Virtual Landscapes — Nero Editions2019↗
Parsons AMT Alumni News2016↗
Digital Design Days — Neonmoire2016↗
Tribeca Press Release2016↗
The Coolest Tech at TFF 2016↗
50th Architecture AUB
Exhibition & Symposium Publication — P.552018↗
Microculture
A Social Card Game at MIT Media Lab2015↗
A SXSW Game About Synthetic Biology — MIT 2015↗
Quasi
3D Printed Object — Trendhunter2015↗
Cool 3D Printing — Parsons AMT2015↗
Guggenheim Helsinki
FaR x Roula Gholmieh — Designboom2015↗
Designing Multiplicity
NYC Media Lab / Medium2015↗
Awarded School Fund — Parsons AMT2014↗
Anjar Complex
Paris–Venice Exhibition P.1232012↗
BAB (Bab el Bahrein)
Domus Magazine — Competition Feature2012↗
Selected Works
Interactive Installation
Complessità
New York — 2016-2019
1 / —
Complessità is a performance that reverses the traditional human-machine interaction to reveal the beauty of complexity and our role within it. At the crossroads of arts, technology, science, and biohacking, it brings us into a new dimension where technology collaborates with a moving human body as operator rather than executor.

A Galvanic Vestibular Stimulator ties the performer’s body direction to the direction of a flocking algorithm projected as a particle display. The dancer is forced to sway according to the flock’s movements — altering their vestibular sense so their perception of orientation aligns with the flock. The ultimate goal: a cultural shift from egocentrism to ecocentrism.
Shows
Roma Europa Festival, Rome (2019) — 4th place Re:Humanism AI Prize
Digital Design Days, Milano (2017)
Tribeca Film Festival, New York (2016)
Creative Tech Week, New York (2016)
Credits
In collaboration with Enrica Beccalli
GVS board: Aisen Caro Chacin (v.1), Jesse Gonzales (v.2)
Performers: Anouk Froidevaux, Tony Bordonaro, Lynn Neuman
Interactive Installation — Parsons MFADT Thesis
Delirious Things
New York — 2015
1 / —
A speculative design fiction demonstrating what it might be like to experience a future where objects have agency. It addresses the ontological and sociological aspects of objects living in symbiosis with humans and having profound behavioral impacts on them.

A kinetic network of objects — absurd in their essence, converting existing forms conventionally associated with their use into something that responds to the absent and the paradoxical. A system that bonds the digital and electrical with the kinetic and physical.
Credits
Advisors: Barbara Morris, John Sharp, Melanie Crean, Ethan Silverman

MFADT 2015 ↗
Experience & Game Design
Museum of Ice Cream: Hiatus
New York — 2019
1 / —
An experiential project called Hiatus — visitors traverse time’s waves encountering a surreal mix of futuristic and nostalgic environments. Technical development and project management of game activations across the Sound Room, Touch Room, and Smell Room: concept-to-schematic transition, game objectives, rule development, prototyping, and activation delivery.
Rooms
Sound Room — Touch Room — Smell Room
Experience & Game Design
Microculture Game × MIT Media Lab
New York — 2015
1 / —
A massively-multiplayer-collectable-card-icebreaker game played where there are many microbiomes. Participants are recruited into Microculture teams — skin flora, gut flora — and tasked with recruiting others by following card prompts. Biggest team wins.

Debuted at SXSW 2015, played by over 200 visitors. Featured at the American Museum of Natural History’s SciCafe in 2017.
Credits
Parsons School of Design & MIT Media Lab
David Kong, Colleen Macklin, Melanie Bossert, Jane McDonough

Watch ↗
Biotech & Product Design
Powers Of: Duration
New York — 2015
1 / —
A pseudo-utilitarian object merging chemical, electrical, and natural elements. It features Euglena — a single-celled organism capable of following light — integrated into a sundial-like design. During the day the object interacts with sunlight, creating visible patterns of Euglena conglomerations. At night, miniature solar cells power it softly, maintaining the Euglena’s well-being.

Part of the “Powers of / Series” — a research project at the intersection of philosophy, science, and art.
Creative Technology
Irvine × Andy Cavatorta Studio
New York — 2019
1 / —
A new type of electronic musical instrument commissioned by AVL Cultural Foundation to commemorate the 75th birthday of Herr Doktor Professor Helmut List. It creates music using crystals of GaPO₄ — one of his favorite AVL inventions, grown after 20 years of research. This exotic piezocrystal operates in incredibly high temperatures and pressures — and now has one musical application.
Role
Design & CAD Technical Drawings, CNC Files, Prototyping Mechanical and Electronic Components, Woodwork, Assembly
Credits
Prototyping Team: Jesse Gonzales, Michelle Chung
Curation & Program Facilitation
Immigration Co/Lab × TFI
New York — 2017
1 / —
The Immigration Co/Lab brought together multidisciplinary creatives — storytellers, technologists, designers, filmmakers, journalists, activists, policymakers — working at the forefront of immigration issues to create projects that serve their communities. During the three-day lab, participants created prototype stories about large-scale community issues using immersive and interactive technology.
Credits
Program Director: Zeina Abi Assy

Recap ↗   Field Notes ↗