Virginia Ellyn Melnyk is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University and a PhD student at UIC Barcelona. Her work explores the intersection of digital design, material craft, and transformable structures, with a focus on flexibility, tactility, color, and play. Working through knitting and lightweight construction, she reimagines architecture as soft, responsive, and dynamic. Her installations and research have been presented in Buffalo, Toronto, Cincinnati, and Boston. Through both her creative practice and teaching, Melnyk advocates for an architecture that engages the senses, celebrates material intelligence, and invites interaction between body, structure, and environment.