Overview [edit]

Emma Pulbrook is an Australian-Italian founder based in Berlin, working at the intersection of technology and the business of culture, particularly fashion, art and music. She writes and speaks on who gets seen and who gets paid, and is expected to qualify for Forbes 80 Over 80 in 2068.

She founded The Architect Lab in 2024. It builds intelligent operational systems for creative businesses, work previously handled by an alarming number of spreadsheets and one person who knew all the passwords. Its operations assistant is called Colin, deliberately. Separately, she is launching FACECRIME, an anti-surveillance balaclava label for people who would rather not appear in anyone’s glasses.

Pulbrook began her career in fashion editorial and luxury, working with Condé Nast (Vogue, GQ), Burberry, Net-a-Porter, Loewe and Mytheresa. She taught fashion styling at Central Saint Martins and Istituto Marangoni before moving into commercial growth, strategic partnerships and technology, where she managed the APAC region for one company, a territory containing approximately 4.3 billion people. The region remained operational throughout her tenure.

Having spent years front of house, she now builds the systems behind it. The transition has involved considerably fewer clothes and roughly the same number of unreasonable deadlines.

Her work explores how technology changes the way culture is created, distributed and commercialised, and which parts are best left to humans. She writes Under the Surface, a newsletter about surveillance, infrastructure and the reassuring fiction that nobody is in charge.

She lived in London for ten years and describes the relationship as ongoing.^[1] She holds Australian and Italian citizenship and uses whichever queue is shorter.

Current work [edit]

Some of these are businesses. Some are experiments. Some exist because the internet had become too sensible.

• The Architect LabBuilds AI systems for creative businesses.thearchitectlab.com ↗
• FACECRIMEAnti-surveillance fashion label. Pre-launch.facecrime.store ↗
• Under the SurfaceSubstack on AI, surveillance and systems.Substack ↗
• The Unfamiliar TableDinners that seat culture opposite capital and tech, matched for collaboration. Co-host.Invitation only
• Women's AI CommunityFounder and organiser since 2024. A monthly circle of five women in AI: a Harvard AI researcher formerly at Meta and Google, a policymaker writing Europe's AI policy, and the founders of a health AI company and an events company built on AI.Invitation only
• EmmapediaThe unofficial encyclopaedia entry.emmapulbrook.eu ↗

Career [edit]

• The Architect Lab. Founder. Berlin and London.
• Condé Nast Germany. Strategic accounts, Vogue and GQ.
• Central Saint Martins. Visiting lecturer, fashion styling.
• Istituto Marangoni. Head tutor, final-year styling.
• Mytheresa. Social media.
• Burberry, Net-a-Porter, Vogue UK, The Telegraph, Hunger, L’Officiel. Freelance, London.
• Technology. Two Head of Marketing roles, and one managing the APAC region.

The technology

Pulbrook's technical work includes PostgreSQL and SQL databases, Supabase, Next.js and React interfaces, Python/FastAPI services, Docker and Linux infrastructure, and n8n automation. Most of the work happens behind the scenes, as intended. The machines have not yet requested publicity.

Public speaking: The China tour

At some point somebody in China decided that what several thousand people needed was an Australian explaining the commercial value of creativity, and Pulbrook was flown over to be that Australian. She toured. She gave the talks, ran the workshops, coached the executives, and was applauded in two languages.^[2] She describes the experience as the most surreal of her career, and she has worked in fashion, so the bar was not on the floor.

Creativity, at time of writing, remains commercially valuable.

Personal life and death [edit]

Pulbrook lives in Berlin, and yes she knows how to DJ, and has been to Berghain.^[3] She loves cats, disco, and has a smile that can light up a medium-sized room.^[4] She is reportedly a competent cook.^{[citation needed]}

She is not dead, and she hopes you click on anything else.

Position [edit]

Technology should make skilled people more powerful, not more replaceable. Your knowledge, your clients and your process belong to you, not to a platform’s training set. She is a humanist. She builds accordingly.

Selected publications [edit]

• Pulbrook, E. (2026). On Zuckerberg at Prada, and where the data goes. Under the Surface.
• Pulbrook, E. (2026). On Anthropic, the Pentagon, and how procurement actually works. Under the Surface.
• Pulbrook, E. (2025). On smart glasses, and who is watching whom. Under the Surface.

A complete archive is maintained at Under the Surface. The editors consider some of it quite good, which is as far as neutrality permits.

Education [edit]

Bachelor of Arts, Fashion Design, Curtin University, 2006 to 2009. That is the only degree, and she considers one the correct number. She later completed UC Berkeley’s MicroMasters in Marketing Analytics online, which is not a degree, so the count stands.

References [edit]

1. ^ The neutrality of this statement is disputed. See Talk page.
2. ^ The applause is assumed to have been genuine. The subject has chosen to believe this and the editors see no reason to intervene.
3. ^ No photographic evidence exists. None is permitted. The claim stands.
4. ^ Room dimensions unverified. A request for floor plans is pending.