Founded by Ma Yansong in 2004, MAD Architects is a renowned global architecture practice, transcending boundaries in design through their constantly innovative, cross-disciplinary approach. In their current commission, the futuristic Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — the first overseas cultural landmark to be designed by a Chinese firm — MAD’s process reaches beyond the building to weave the institution into the cultural fabric of Los Angeles, aiming to sustain a symbiosis between humans, their urban environment, and the natural world.

Germane Barnes is a principal of B-arn-S: an American architecture practice mobilizing design as a force for change. Alongside architects Jennifer Bonner and Christian Stayner, Barnes leads a multidisciplinary team to respond to the challenges presented by climate change and spatial inequalities, shaping an approach grounded in experimentation and reparative construction methods. Putting under-resourced communities front and center, their hands-on, research-led practice has seen the construction of arts centers, community spaces and open-air markets across the USA, designing in service of social transformation by raising local voices.

Emanuele Coccia is associate professor at the EHESS in Paris He is the author of , The Life of Plants (2018), Metamorphosis (2021) and Philosophy of the Home (2024). His books are translated into several languages. He collaborated with many artists. He recently published a photo-theory book with Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen (Modern Alchemy 2022), a philosophical epistolary on light with photographer Paolo Roversi (Lettres sur la lumières, 2024) and a book on the relationship between fashion and philosophy with Gucci’s former creative director Alessandro Michele (The Life of Forms. Philosophy or Re-enchantment, 2024).

In South America’s ‘Lithium Triangle’ — a mineral-dense region that crosses Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia — state actors and corporations compete for control over the metal that will power the green transition. But as nations in the Global North fixate on cleaning-up their power supplies, Dr. Ernesto Picco—an investigative journalist and professor at the National University of Santiago del Estero, Argentina—is documenting its consequence in his field research, based in the communities embattled in protecting their territories against these corporate interests.Culminating in his latest book, “Crónicas del litio: Sudamérica en disputa por el futuro de la energía global" (Futurock 2022), Picco presents the environmental harm and regional disputes ignited around these vast sites of extraction to suggest that in our ambition towards a green future, we may be repeating the destructive errors of the past.

Since proposing the idea of a ‘sponge city’ in 2013, Professor Kongjian Yu has received global recognition for his research into urban flooding and climate adaptation strategies. As Principal Designer of Turenscape, a world-renowned practice reshaping the disciplines of landscape and urban design, Yu brings these principles into practice, tending to natural hydrological systems to design more resilient cities. Building on ancient teachings and traditional land practices to reconnect people to the earth, Turenscape re-approaches landscape architecture as a conservation practice, presenting opportunities to steward the environment for future generations. The practice was awarded the World Landscape of the Year Prize in 2015 and 2017.

Joe Christa Giraso leads the campus landscape design for MASS Design Group, researching native flora and fauna under a large-scale, minimal intervention reforestation project, advocating for a deeper, long-term notion of ‘sustainability’ rooted in nourishing communities in the present, and future generations. Giraso is a Chevening Scholar and an associate member of the British Landscape Institute and the Rwanda Institute of Architects.

Following her tenure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Jackson-Dumont served as the Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education from 2014–2019, her newest role as Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles represents a synthesis of this work. Set to open its doors in 2025, the Lucas Museum will be the first museum centered on the power of visual storytelling. Embracing art forms across media, cultures, places, and times, and considering the relevance of museums in the present, this unprecedented re-imagination of what a cultural institution can be aims to create a space where art can bring people closer, and connect them to the world beyond its walls.

Alexis Sablone is an architect, designer and multidisciplinary artist; and a member of the US Olympic Women’s Skateboard Team. Drawing on decades spent on a board, her practice experiments in using urban design to darn the social fabric of our cities, hoping to excite people of all ages to ‘play’ in public spaces. Working in innovative materials and construction technologies, her sculptural, ‘skateable’ forms have revitalized a vacant plaza in Florida, enlivened a public square in Malmo, Sweden, and allowed skaters and non-skaters to share stewardship of the waterfront in Lisbon, Portugal.

Architect Nguyen Ha's practice focuses on making the most of the serenity that architecture can provide for everyday living in every space it occupies. Traditional and contemporary native materials appear naturally in her work. She co-founded ARB Architects Vietnam, with Kurt Aellen and Laurent Cantalou, having worked at ARB Architects’ Bern office, under Aellen’s direct guidance. Ha graduated in Architecture from the University of Civil Engineering in Vietnam, then received a full scholarship from the Swiss government to study the MAS programme at the Department of Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ). Ha was awarded the Moira Gemmill Prize 2024 for Emerging Architecture.

Sameep Padora is an architect and author. Born in Chamba, Northern India, Padora established his Mumbai based-practice in 2007 after graduating from the GSD, Harvard University. The studio’s work has been widely published both in India and internationally, and has won multiple international awards. Besides the architectural practice, Sameep also runs a not-for-profit sPare that researches issues of urbanization in India with a focus on housing. sPare’s research publications; In the Name of Housing, How to build an Indian House and (de)Coding Mumbai are projects attempting to unravel the production of affordable housing in Indian cities. Sameep is also one of the co-founders of the Bandra Collective, a group of six architects engaged with the design of public spaces in Mumbai. Sameep serves on the academic boards of a number of educational institutes and is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at CEPT.

Beatrice Galilee is the cofounder, director and chief curator of The World Around. A London-born, New York-based curator, critic and cultural advisor who is internationally recognized for her expertise in global contemporary architecture and design. She is the author of Radical Architecture of the Future, (Phaidon in 2021), and between 2014-2019 served as the first curator of contemporary architecture and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her curatorial work, writing and research has been exhibited and published all over the world.

Satomi Blair leads The World Around’s events and film. She is a NYC based producer, actor and filmmaker.  Founder of multimedia studio 4Hawk she works in experiential marketing, production and creative content with various organizations, past and current clients include, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Women’s Media Center, The Wing, AWC and 2x4.  Satomi’s previous roles have included Director of Production at WPP/Ogilvy, Director/Event management roles with Garwood Events, DeBeers, Foundry9.

Dan Howarth is a British design writer, editor, and consultant based in New York City who is responsible for the communications of The World Around. Dan works as an editorial, branding, and communications advisor for creative companies, with past and current clients including Kelly Wearstler, Condé Nast, and BMW Group. He also regularly writes for titles including Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Sight Unseen, and Dezeen, where he previously oversaw the online magazine’s U.S. operations, and now acts as a Contributing Editor.

Ana Minujin is an audiovisual artist, producer and researcher from Argentina, currently based in New York. She is a project leader for The World Around’s Young Climate Prize and supports on creative and design and research for The World Around Summit, In Focus and Annual Dinner programs. Her experimental documentary works have been featured as part of GrrlHaus cinema, LATEA Theater and won the support of Mecenazgo Cultural in 2020. As a producer and director, Minujin has staged a multimedia performance with the support of Periodismo Performatico.

Our Young Climate Voice is Pamela Elizarrarás Acitorés, 24, from Mexico (@pamela__EA). Under the mentorship of Mariana Pestana, a Portuguese architect and independent curator, Acitores developed her project Climate Words. a growing online database that promotes climate literacy by curating an extensive lexicon of keywords submitted by experts climate activists. Through Climate Words, Acitores focuses on bridging the gap in climate knowledge as well as improving global education. The Young Climate Prize jury described the project as: “Super compelling, interesting, dynamic, and powerful. Finding the right words and common definitions for talking about climate change, and, importantly, educating around these terms, is an invaluable tool, since creating accessible language can and will lead to definitive action. Pamela’s project has the potential to achieve great things beyond the world of art, and to become highly impactful in reality.”

Pamela said about her experience "The World Around mentorship has been an exciting experience for improving our project and I am grateful for the insightful guidance and feedback I received during these three months. I am excited to present my work alongside the talented young environmentalists in the cohort and honored for Climate Words to have been awarded the Young Climate Voice Award. We are ready to further expand the project with Earth Day as healthy and motivating momentum."

Our Young Climate Designer is Foday David Kamara, 22, from Sierra Leone. Kamara is a sustainability advocate who uses plastic extrusion technology to transform waste into bricks and paving tiles – reducing the reliance on imported cement bricks. Working with his mentor, architect Dominic Leong, on the project titled Ecovironment, Kamara has addressed the need for sustainability within communities, and the environmental issues caused by post-consumer plastic waste and unsustainable building materials. Kamara’s project stands out for the manner in which he is bringing this training into local communities. Ecovironment is also highly scalable, having so far created 60 jobs, recycled 460 tonnes of plastics, and used its profits to feed 1,500 schools.
The Young Climate Prize jury said: “This project stands out not only for the idea of recycling plastic waste in a realistic and scalable way, but also for the emphasis on systems, training, and education, and the plan to embed these broader ideas into local communities. The project can also be applied to other countries and has the potential for truly global impact.”

Kamara said: "I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to connect with 24 other climate champions. Seeing so many people are so young, motivated, and accomplished is remarkable! Every single project has inspired me to improve my work. It's indeed unique. The best part is that everyone is so abject and is always teaching, learning from, and supporting one another to thrive.
I look forward to working together as a team and mitigating the climate crises over the years!"

Our Special Jury Prize recipient is Aziba Ekio, 24, from Nigeria. The poet was awarded a special prize for her work bringing light to the climate crisis through writing and spoken word. Working with Sumayya Vally, founder and director of Counterspace, Ekio archives this notion through her poetry. Her first anthology, entitled The Color, Green is her contribution to the fight for climate action. The Young Climate Prize jury said: “As one of the oldest tools of communication, poetry still manages to remain so powerful today, and helps to grow a collective weight around issues. Aziba’s poetry is extremely stirring, uplifting, passionate, and moving, and her strong voice in the fight to tackle the climate crisis will undoubtedly be heard.”

Ekio wrote: "The Color, Green is a heavily personal project - after a major flooding in Ogbia, my home town, I began writing more poems that would later become part of the collection. This project is a platform to channel pain into passion, passion into action; and inspire others to do the same. I’ve learned so much from TWA, my fellow impressive YCP cohort and my lovely mentor, Sumayya Vally; being around like-minded individuals with the same vision has been liberating."

Indy Johar MBE is an architect and the co-founder of Dark Matter Labs—a field laboratory focused on building the institutional infrastructures for radical civic societies, cities, regions and towns. Dark Matter analyzes the shifts required in the underlying ‘dark matter’—monetary, economic, governance, regulatory and policy systems—to manifest transformations in our food, housing, land, material and nature systems towards a future of mutual thriving.

Eyal Weizman MBE FBA is a Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the founding director of Forensic Architecture. Since 2010, Weizman has led the award-winning agency comprising architects, scientists, computer programmers, video editors, and lawyers to investigate human rights violations around the world. Professor Weizman is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer and the founder of Faber Futures: a multi-disciplinary practice advocating the use of advanced biological technologies in response to urgent global challenges. Learning from non-human life forms, Chieza’s work ranges from experimenting with bacterial dyes to reduce water waste in textile production, to structuring and envisioning policies towards sustainable, resilient bio-economies driven by technology.

Henk Ovink is the Executive Director for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water and Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute. Ovink served as the first ever global water ambassador for over 8 years, appointed in 2015 by the Cabinet of the Netherlands as Special Envoy for International Water Affairs. He is the author of the book “Too Big, Rebuild by Design: A Transformative Approach to Climate Change.”

Sammy Baloji is an artist whose work explores the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was born and raised in the contested and mineral-rich Katanga province of the DRC, and his photography, film and sculpture forms an ongoing research project into the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the region, as well as a questioning of the impact of Belgian colonization.

FeiFei Zhou is a Chinese-born artist and architect, whose work explores spatial, cultural, and ecological impacts of the industrialized built environment. With Anna Tsing, Jennifer Deger and Alder Keleman Saxena, she co-edited Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene, an online interactive platform for scientific research into, and research dissemination about, feral species and feral dynamics in the Anthropocene.

Julia King is an architect, teacher and urban researcher. Her design-led research at the London School of Economics studies the urbanizing world and its impact on marginalized communities. From analyzing the impacts of mass-migration on UK high streets to co-designing sanitation systems for urban settlements in New Delhi, King’s research aims to understand cultural and institutional relationships in areas of dense development, to collaboratively design and build site-specific interventions

Dr. Adrian Lahoud is an architect, urban designer and researcher, and Dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. Responding to a need for a planetary-scale response to the climate crisis, his project The Second Sea is an online platform that calculates the damages proportionately owed by the world’s nations to coastal cities at risk from rising sea levels.

The 2023 RIBA Royal Gold Medal and 2017 Curry Stone Prize winner has for many years focused on teaching traditional building techniques to women in Pakistan, allowing them to develop or rebuild their own communities in the wake of disasters. Lari is the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which dedicated to the research and conservation of the architectural heritage of her country—both the World Heritage Sites in Makli and Lahore, as well as everyday buildings. Her work aims to highlight the vulnerability of the Global South in the face of the climate crisis, and find architectural solutions to help raise the population above the poverty line.

Freddy Mamani is a Bolivian architect renowned for his development of a New Andean Architecture. His work aims to imbue culture, color and personality into the "monochrome" city of El Alto, through buildings based on ancient local architecture and craft, and is transforming the city as a result. References for the style he has developed come from the ancient city of Tiwanaku, from which he takes geometric shapes found among the ruins—which include depictions of condors, pumas and other natural forms—and blends them into more figural organic designs that also reference elements like mountains, lightning, animals and flowers.

Japanese architect Junya Ishigami established his eponymous firm in 2004, after working for several years with Kazuyo Sejima at Pritzker Prize-winning studio SANAA. In 2008, Ishigami designed the Japanese pavilion at the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale, and in 2010, he won the Golden Lion for Best Project at the same event. His innovative integration of complex contexts into his projects has earned Ishigami several other accolades throughout his career.

Jeanne Gang is the founding partner of international architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang. Known for a distinctive approach that expands beyond architecture’s conventional boundaries, she creates striking places that connect people with their communities and the natural environment. Her diverse portfolio includes a major addition to the American Museum of Natural History, the re-imagination of the
Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, and the transformation of the Beloit College Powerhouse into a student center.

Chinese architect Lu Wenyu co-founded Amateur Architecture Studio with her husband, Wang Shu—the first Chinese citizen to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize—in 2007. The duo focuses on craft-based and traditional architecture practices, and frequently works with recycled materials. Continually challenging the "professional and soulless architecture" practiced in China, their best-known projects include the Ningbo History Museum, the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum, and the Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.

Paul Elvis Tangem is a sustainable development expert, who currently serves as the Head of Sustainable Land Management Division at the African Union Commission. In this role, he is also the Coordinator for the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI)—a pan-African programme aimed at resilience building in the continent’s dry lands through a mosaic of sustainable land management, restoration and sustainable economic development projects.

Joseph Grima is an architect, curator and writer, and a partner at the Milanbased office Space Caviar. Through design practice and research, the office investigates the possibility of alternative material futures and new definitions of architectural practice.

Aziba Ekio is a storyteller, writer and poet. A member of The World Around Young Climate Prize* 2023 cohort, she was awarded the Jury Prize in recognition of the impact of her work. In 2022, she completed her first poetry chapbook titled “I Chose Life” and emerged as a finalist in the Abuja Literary Society national poetry competition. She has developed several advocacy campaigns on climate action and environmental rights such as “Plastic Suffocates” featured in international media, Ads of the World and “Suitable Nigeria,” to draw attention to the Soot crises in the Nigerian South-South region. She is actively in pursuit of telling stories that will change the world around and inspire collective action.

Leong Leong explores new models of urban living, reconfiguring the intersections of art, community, and culture. The internationally recognized firm, founded by brothers Dominic
and Chris Leong, works with diverse clients to build cultural resonance and advance social agendas within the built environment. Notable projects include the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood, Ray Philly, and the US Pavilion for the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Liam Young is an Australian-born film director and architect. Young's work is situated within the fields of design fiction and critical design.

Es Devlin is an artist and designer who created a thought-provoking installation, Come Home Again, in front of the Tate Modern in London last September. Devlin is best known for her large-scale production designs for some of the world’s biggest musical artists, having created stage sets for Beyoncé, Kanye West, Adele, The Weeknd, and more, as well as immersive installations for various luxury brands and global events.

Vishaan Chakrabarti is founder and creative director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism | PAU. Chakrabarti’s decades of architectural experience include roles
as principals at SOM and SHoP, Manhattan planning director in the years following 9/11, the president of Moynihan Station Venture, and the Dean of the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. He is the author of A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, and the forthcoming The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing Cities for Pluralism and Planet.

Ana Maria Gutiérrez is a Colombian architect. Creator of the Casa del Pensamiento, or the House of Thought, a concept from many ethnic groups that she has recovered and expanded upon as part of her work to strengthen local resources and knowledges in the rural communities of Colombia.

Andres Jaque is an architect and the founder of Office for Political Innovation, and serves as the Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Dr. Pirjo Haikola is an underwater designer, who considers corals and marine ecosystems to be her stakeholders and clients. Taking what she describes as a more-than-human approach to design, in her art work Haikola uses photogrammetry to recreate subaquatic coral landscapes, utilizing sea urchin shell-biopolymer material, to bring to the surface problems in the ocean.

Mexico City-based architect Tatiana Bilbao presents a brand-new education and research center for one of the richest and most diverse ecosystems in the world: the Sea of Cortes. Bilbao and her studio—which typically focuses on sustainable design
and social housing—were cognizant of the complex landscape asserted onto this project. They aimed to symbiotically reconnect humans with the environment through
its architecture, which is “conceived as a ruin (past or future) that was invaded by nature and has left behind a window into another world.

Rivar Claure is a Bolivian visual artist whose work revolves around identity, imagination and territory. Claure’s practice also extends to sculpture and photography, and his range of images offer layered reflections of collective identities, resulting in a poetic, almost whimsical exposé of cultural juxtaposition

Zeal-Henry develop projects that foreground narratives and culture, which are critical to designing a more progressive and plural urban environment. This process allows them to advocate for and create alternative visions for equitable cities of the future, as a sort of “counter institution” that works as an institutional-type practice.

Architect Afaina de Jong leads AFARAI, an Amsterdam-based architectural agency that specializes in spatial design and strategy. The studio’s aim is to cross the boundaries of the traditional architecture practice by dealing with the existing city with an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach, integrating theory and research with design. De Jong works on the boundary of architecture and art, and her work is deeply connected to representing people and cultural movements that are not traditionally represented in architectural form. By using form languages, colors, patterns and narratives that are other, she works towards a more inclusive experience of space. De Jong is a contemporary thinker, keeping a pulse on the now while at the same time projecting a unique vision of the future. For her, it is important that architecture is not only perceived, but also experienced and interacted with. Her discourse is international and intersectional, connecting counterculture with architecture.

The pluralistic Palestine-based studio AAU Anastas have multiple ongoing initiatives that all share a through-line in experimentation, process and community. The team of brothers founded Local Industries in 2012, as a community of bold artisans and designers dedicated to industrial furniture-making, and SCALES in 2016, as a research department that is constantly enhanced by linking scales that are usually opposed. Their most recent works include All Purpose, an installation for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale; the Hebron courthouse project; and Stone Matters – a research experiment into the possibilities of using stone in Palestine’s contemporary architecture. Elias and Yousef also co-founded Radio alHara – a dynamic community-based online radio station incorporating critical conversations and music from Bethlehem, Ramallah and Amman that they broadcast during quarantine.

A cooperative design practice investigating the organization of the material environment. Rotor develops critical positions through research and design. Besides projects in architecture and interior design, it also produces exhibitions, books, economic models and policy proposals. In 2016, the group launched Rotor DC — a cooperative that organizes the reuse of construction materials; dismantling, processing and trading salvaged building components. Based in Brussels, the group attempts to be as generous with this city as it is with them. They seek to collaborate with contractors, nonprofits and other companies, and to become a central part of a regional ecosystem for large-scale reuse of building materials.

Hsieh Ying-chun is an architect of post-disaster recovery. In his award-winning work, the Taiwanese architect and builder has been helping people rebuild their communities, homes and lives since 1999, when he became internationally recognized for his work reconstructing remote rural villages in Taiwan after the devastating 1999 earthquake destroyed thousands of communities. Hsieh Ying-chun organized the reconstruction of housing and communities in disaster-struck areas while faced with two challenges: to build houses within an extremely tight budget, and to base the projects on the notion of sustainable construction, green building, cultural preservation and creation of local employment opportunities. In more recent years, he has continued to help people build their own houses, from the catastrophic earthquakes in Sichuan, China to the sufferers of the South East Asian Tsunami.

Thai architect and artist Boonserm Premthada, founder of Bangkok Project Studio, believes that architecture is the physical creation of an atmosphere that serves to heighten man’s awareness of his natural surroundings. His work isn’t about designing buildings, but rather the manipulation of light, shadow, wind, sound, and smell... creating a “poetics in architecture” that is a living sense. Beyond the realms of theory and practice, Premthada’s work also carries a strong socio-economic and cultural agenda as many of his projects have social programs that aim to improve the lives of the underprivileged. The Kantana Film and Animation Institute is a prime example of his theoretical and real-world ideals, while his notable projects include the Kantana Institute in Nakhon Pathom, Wine Ayutthaya, and Elephant World — all in Thailand.

Alexander Shevchenko, founder of Zvidsy Agency, began ReStart Ukraine in 2022 as both a project and an NGO in response to the Russian invasion and ongoing war in his home country. To offer hope and perspective, this open-source collective of researchers and practitioners is beginning to explore and develop the best ways to restore afflicted urban and rural areas after destruction of such scale. Prior to ReStart Ukraine, Alexander worked and studied in Ukraine, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and Malaysia with various international stakeholders such as UN-Habitat (WUF 9), GIZ, USAIN, UNDP. He has a multisectorial background in civil engineering, spatial planning, and urbanism.

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self- built project, the studio has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen. As a founding director of this architecture, art and design collective, Maria Lisogorskaya's projects range from the scales of product and material prototyping, to architectural design and organizational strategy.

Exploring the cultural and environmental effects of settler colonialism from an Aboriginal perspective. The Karrabing Film Collective uses the creation of film and art installations as a form of Indigenous grassroots resistance and self-organization. The collective opens a space beyond binaries of the fictional and the documentary, the past and the present. Meaning “low tide” in the Emmiyengal language, karrabing refers to a form of collectivity outside of government-imposed strictures of clanship or land ownership. Shot on handheld cameras and phones, most of Karrabing’s films dramatize and satirize the daily scenarios and obstacles that collective members face in their various interactions with corporate and state entities.

In each of its projects, non-profit institution MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society) researches, builds and advocates for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity. For In Focus: Precarity, MASS Design Group director Megan Suau explains why the firm was founded on the understanding that architecture’s influence reaches beyond individual buildings. The team believes that architecture has a critical role to play in supporting communities to confront history, shape new narratives, collectively heal and project new possibilities for the future.

Ecocitex is a social enterprise that sells 100% recycled textile products through more than 250 women-led businesses across Chile. The social enterprise oversees an extensive production chain that involves anyone with access to clothing in the circular economy. Textile waste is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions in addition to releasing half a million tons of microfibres into the ocean every year (European Parliament, 2021). Ecocitex’s recycling process extends textile lifetimes to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Manuel Herz researches the architecture and urbanism of migration. His award-winning books “From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara” and “African Modernism — Architecture of Independence” explore very different ideas about architecture on the African continent, but both relate in some way to the “power of a new beginning”. Based in Basel, Switzerland, Manuel Herz Architects is a practice embedded in research, but also builds across a very wide range of typologies, locations and scales, from the architectural to the urban and territorial. Completed projects include the Synagogue of Mainz, an apartment building with moving facades in Zurich, and a social housing project with a kindergarten in Lyon.

Lina Ghotmeh, born and raised in Beirut, is a humanist architect and founder of a Paris-based practice of architects, researchers, designers and artists. Echoing her lived experience in Beirut, her office's every project emerges in complete symbiosis with nature after a thorough historical and materially sensitive approach. All of Lina’s proposals are testimonies to the complex simplicity of her approach and sensitive twist on architecture — notably in projects like Réalimenter Masséna or Beirut's highly-praised tower, Stone Garden.

Heavily inspired by emotional geography, slow TV and magical realism, Alfred Marasigan conducts serendipitous research and transmedial practices often via live streaming. Such formats anchor his current explorations on simultaneity, sustainability, solidarity and sexuality. Marasigan graduated in 2019 with an MA in Contemporary Art from the UiT Arctic University of Norway's Kunstakademiet i Tromsø and is a Norwegian Council of the Arts Grantee for Newly Graduated Artists. He currently lives in Manila and has been a faculty member of Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Fine Arts since 2013.

Etta Madete Mukuba is the affordable housing director at BuildX, and a human-centered design architect, who believes that communities must be at the heart of building and design. She chose architecture school because she saw the field as both physical and tangible, that would allow her to come up with practical solutions. She’s passionate about sustainable building technology and materials in the built environment. Madete seeks to create social change through design and addresses development through an architectural lens. She’s currently working on creating sustainable, low-income housing developments in Nairobi that supplement existing structures. Using innovative and creative design approaches, Madete aims to build communities and neighborhoods that foster health and well-being.

Biemann, born in Switzerland, is an artist, author, and video essayist whose research-based artistic practice involves fieldwork in remote locations from Greenland to Amazonia. There, she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water. Biemann is appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea (2008). She has received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Grand Award for Art, and the 2018 Prix Thun for Art and Ethics.

Part of a pluralistic practice working across text, performance and moving image, Himali Singh Soin’s ongoing research utilizes metaphors from the natural environment to construct speculative cosmologies that reveal non-linear entanglements between human and non-human life.

Professor Lesley Lokko is the founder of the African Futures Institute and director of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. An academic and a novelist who has published more than a dozen works of fiction, Professor Lokko has taught at and led universities around the world. Professor Lokko founded the African Futures Institute in the city of Accra, Ghana with TWA alumni Sir David Adjaye, in order to shift the axis of architectural innovation and influence away from the global North toward the global South. This project addresses the need for a new model of education that brings together the arts, humanities, and sciences.

Li Hu and Huang Wenjing are the founding partners of OPEN Architecture. Their new project, The Chapel of Sound, is an open-air concert hall nestled in a valley close to the ruins of the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall.
Commissioned to capture the experience of music performed outdoors, the chapel’s design was informed by a search for the shape of sound. The concrete chapel has no heating or air conditioning, with a Pantheon-inspired aperture that opens to the elements. Winding staircases weave through the building to a rooftop platform that offers panoramic views of the valley and Great Wall.

Based in Rotterdam, Eva Pfannes is co-founder of the international design practice OOZE. OOZE works across scales, combining an understanding of ecology with technological expertise to produce insights into the behavior of people who use the built environment.

Born in Calcutta and raised in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, Amitav Ghosh is a writer whose work has been translated into more than thirty languages and recognized by awards such as the Padma Shri, the Dan David Prize, and the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. In 2018, Ghosh was the first English-language author to win the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor.

DESIGN EARTH, a collaborative practice led by El Hadi Jazairy and Rania Ghosn, engages with geography to open up a range of aesthetic and political concerns for architecture and urbanism. Through speculative drawings, they tackle big-picture issues and imagine new possibilities and paradigms.

Sebastián López Brach, a documentary photographer and visual artist from Argentina, centers his practice on the connection between humans and the environment. In 2019 and 2020, he received an Early Career Grant from National Geographic to research the environmental and cultural importance of the largest wetlands in Latin America. López Brach also received a COVID-19 Emergency Fund grant from National Geographic to work on the impact of the pandemic and the historical descent of the Paraná River, recording the stories of families living in the Paraná Delta.

Abraham, a multi-disciplinary designer based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has a background in architecture and works with digital media and spatial design to interrogate themes of equitable futurism and intersectionality. Her latest project, the Abyssinian Cyber-Vernaculus is a series of virtual-reality experiences and visual narratives designed to contest the active exclusion of Black and Brown formalisms and knowledge from the architectural canon. The Abyssinian Cyber-Vernaculus attempts to uncover and reinstate the presence and power of those marginalized or demonized by the dominant conservative ethos of Ethiopian society while pushing up against the apocryphal stories of Africa.

Top Manta’s name comes from the word mantero the common name for street vendors in Barcelona. After opening their first clothing store in 2018, in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona, they registered as a nonprofit organization, the Top Manta Cooperative, in 2020.

Decolonizing Architecture Art Research (DAAR), the artistic practice of architects Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, is situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics. Over the last two decades, they have developed a series of research projects, exhibitions and publications that are both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality, in particular for displaced peoples.

Dominique Petit-Frère is the co-Founder & Vision Director of Limbo Accra, a collaborative spatial design studio based in Accra, Ghana, dedicated to architectural projects, art installations and urban design in West African cities. The studio offers a large and flexible outlet for experimentation in public art, design and architectural production.

The First Wave is a feature documentary film by Academy Award-nominated American filmmaker Matthew Heineman that follows the lives of doctors, nurses and patients in one of New York City’s hardest-hit hospital systems during the harrowing first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Released in January 2022, the film was directed, produced, and shot by Matthew Heineman, considered by Sundance Film Festival as "one of the most talented and exciting documentary filmmakers working today." The film is driven by its characters in a cinéma vérité style from the frontlines of the global pandemic.

Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando is one of the most renowned designers in the field today. His work, defined by large expanses of unadorned concrete and emotive use of natural elements like sunlight, water, and wind, has become definitive of contemporary Japanese architecture, but his influence extends the world around. His most recent project embeds a new exhibition space for contemporary art into a neoclassical landmark building in the center of Paris.

Brazilian architect, writer, and educator Paulo Tavares’s research has been featured in various exhibitions and publications worldwide, including Harvard Design Magazine, The Architectural Review, Oslo Architecture Triennale, Istanbul Design Biennale, and São Paulo art Biennial, and he was co-curator of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Tavares teaches spatial and visual cultures at the University of Brasília in Brazil and leads the architectural agency autonoma.

Since founding Formafantasma in 2009, Italian designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin have championed the need for value-laden advocacy merged with holistic design thinking. Their aim is to facilitate a deeper understanding of both our natural and built environments and to propose transformative interventions through design. Cambio is a series of investigations into the way wood is sourced and used. Each of the studio’s investigations represents a collaboration with experts from the fields of science, conservation, engineering, policymaking and philosophy.

The “M” of MVRDV, Founding Partner and Principal Architect Winy Maas, has received international acclaim for his broad range of urban planning and building projects. MVRDV’s extraordinary new project Depot Van Beuningen is the world’s first fully accessible art depot, located at Museum Park in the center of Rotterdam. The building has drawn huge interest for its radical and potentially revolutionary approach to open arts storage.

Sir David Chipperfield founded David Chipperfield Architects in 1985 and has since become one of the world’s most admired architecture firms, having won several international competitions and completed more than 100 built works.

Chilean curator and researcher Camila Marambio directs the nomadic research program Ensayos, which she founded in 2010 in Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia in the south of Chile. Ensayos brings together artists, scientists and locals to exercise speculative and emergent forms of eco-cultural ethics at the world’s end.

Paul Farber serves as Senior Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Public Art & Space. In 2012, together with Ken Lum, he founded Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit art and history studio. Monument Lab works with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies, and cultural institutions on participatory approaches to public engagement and collective memory. The studio and its research team spent a year producing the National Monument Audit, scouring almost a half million records of historic properties created and maintained by federal, state, local, tribal, institutional, and publicly assembled sources.

Holly Jean Buck is a geographer and environmental social scientist studying how emerging technologies can help build a regenerative society. Currently, her research focuses on what it will take socially and politically to put carbon back underground. She is the author of After Geoengineering (Verso, 2019), which explores best-case scenarios for climate intervention, and Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough (Verso, 2021), on how to execute a planned ending for fossil fuels.

Carolina Caycedo is a prominent multidisciplinary artist known for her performances, video, artist’s books, sculptures, and installations that examine environmental and social issues. Her work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory, as a fundamental element for non-repetition of violence against human and non-human entities. David de Rozas is a multidisciplinary artist, award-winning filmmaker, and educator. His practice merges experimental documentary and contemporary art forms, revisiting and relocating the politics of memory within the tensions of colonization and decolonization.

Elizabeth Hoover is an associate professor in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley whose research, life, and community work focuses on food sovereignty and environmental justice for Native American communities. Based on collaborations with tribal communities across the US, Hoover has published books and articles about Native American food sovereignty and seed rematriation; environmental reproductive justice in Native American communities; and tribal citizen science and community based participatory research.

Renee Kemp-Rotan, CEO studiorotan, is an urban designer and master planner. She is the first African American woman to graduate Syracuse University, B. Architecture. Presently, Kemp-Rotan is working with MOVE CDC, the community, AIA, and NOMA to develop The Africatown International Design Idea Competition in Mobile, Alabama, the only settlement in America built by Africans at the site of the last African slave cargo ship.

Joseph Kunkel, a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, is a Principal at MASS Design Group, where he directs the Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab. He is a community designer and educator, focused on sustainable development practices throughout Indian Country. His professional career has centered on community-based design, material research, fabrication, and construction. In 2019 Kunkel was awarded an Obama Fellowship for his work with Indigenous communities.

Simon Denny makes exhibitions that unpack the social and political implications of the technology industry and the rise of social media, startup culture, blockchains and cryptocurrencies. He co-founded the artist mentoring program Berlin Program for Artists and serves as Professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg.

Macarena Gómez-Barris is a scholar and writer who works at the intersections of art, environment, feminist-cuir politics, and decolonial theory and praxis. She is the author of four books, Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (2009), The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (2017), Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Américas (2018), and Towards a Sociology of a Trace (2010, with Herman Gray). She is completing a new book on what she terms the colonial Anthropocene, At the Sea’s Edge: Liquidity Beyond Colonial Extinction (Forthcoming Duke University Press 2022).

Dani Admiss is an independent Iranian-English curator and researcher based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her projects operate across the interlinking fields of art, design, science and technology. She is interested in the social and material entanglements that surface from extensively mapping worlds and her projects explore curating as a collective storytelling practice, imagined and pursued. She runs Dark Conservation, a long-term curatorial research project that rethinks the role of ecological conservation practices in expanded contexts and is the founder of Playbour, a co-creation platform on digital labour and has worked on various curatorial projects and exhibitions in the UK and internationally.

The Unknown Fields Division is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions to the ends of the earth to bear witness to alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness. As part of In Focus we share a film made by the studio of their visit to Salar de Uyuni, home to over half of the world’s reserves of Lithium.

Jaida Grey Eagle is an Oglala Lakota artist, born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jaida is a photographer, producer, beadwork artist and writer. ... Jaida is the co-producer of the Sisters Rising Documentary and is passionate about bringing awareness of Indigenous issues.

Elsa Hoover is an architectural designer and writer from Minneapolis whose work focuses on borders, living environments, and Indigenous futures. Her recent work includes cartographic illustration and an immersive theater installation. Her work has been featured in The Avery Review, The Funambulist, and elsewhere. She received a degree in architecture from Columbia University and studies architecture at the Harvard GSD. Elsa works as an editor-at-large with the Avery Review and as a design researcher with MASS Design Group in Boston/Santa Fe.

Ryūe Nishizawa is one of the most important and influential architects working in Japan today. Founder of Office of Ryue Nishizawa and co-founder of SANAA. SANAA is often said to work with a ‘fourth dimension’ in their design of space, and Nishizawa's solo work takes this position to engineering and spatial extremes. Nishizawa will present his recent single-family house on the coast of Chile. Photo credit: Cristobal Palma

Born and raised in Mexico City, director Fernando Frías will present his award-winning film, Ya No Estoy Aquí that is set in the mountains of Monterrey, one of the northernmost cities in Mexico. The film follows Kolombias, a distinctive urban tribe from the violence-plagued regions of the country that once created a countercultural movement around their love for old-fashioned cumbia music. Photo credit: Fernando Frías

Alice Rawsthorn is an award-winning design critic and the author of critically acclaimed books on design, including Hello World: Where Design Meets Life and, most recently, Design as an Attitude. Alice is a co-founder, with Paola Antonelli, of the Design Emergency project to investigate design's response to the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath. Photo credit: Michael Leckie

Cave_Bureau was founded in 2014 in Nairobi by Kabage Karanja & Stella Mutegi who steer a diverse range of projects and research studies on the African continent. The bureau of architects and researchers charting explorations into architecture and urbanism within nature. Their work addresses the anthropological and geological context of the African city as a means to confront the challenges of our contemporary rural and urban lives. Image credit: Cave_Bureau

Sir David Adjaye OBE is an award-winning Ghanaian-British architect known to infuse his artistic sensibilities and ethos for community-driven projects. His ingenious use of materials, bespoke designs and visionary sensibilities have set him apart as one of the leading architects of his generation. Sir David will be giving a remote tour of an expansive new project currently under construction in Florida. Photo credit: Adjaye Associates

Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa. Balancing imagination and reality, art and science, their work innovates typologies, technologies and methodologies to address issues as diverse as the construction of the landscape or the prefabrication of the house. They will be sharing their spectacular new home and studio, Ca'n Terra. Photo credit: Iwan Baan

BlackSpace is an interdisciplinary collective seeking to bridge policy, people, and place, with a mission of equity and justice. Since meeting in 2015, the collective has been working to nurture and support Black people in fields of influence that shape our social and spatial environments while also working to support heritage conservation in Black and marginalized communities. As professionals trained in architecture, urban planning, and design, their work has also involved unlearning traditional modes of urbanism that exclude marginalized voices and creating new modes of work that center equity. To that end, BlackSpace has created a working manifesto to help guide our work as urbanists working in and with communities.

Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is an Oakland-based architecture and real estate development non-profit co-founded by Deanna Van Buren working to end mass incarceration by building infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Their work counters the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice—courthouses, prisons, and jails—by creating spaces and buildings for restorative justice, community building, and housing for people coming out of incarceration. Photo credit: Courtesy of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces.

For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse and direct action. It works with artists and organizations to center the voices of artists in public discourse, expand what participation in a democracy looks like, and reshape conversations about politics. Photo credit: Jeff Vespa

In collaboration with Stockholm-based museum ArkDes, Sámi architect and Indigenous artist Joar Nango presents a digital manifestation of the Sámi Architecture Library. Nango's work investigates the nomadic conception of space, territories, and ideas around the concept of home, focusing on different ways of dealing with materiality, movement and space. Photo credit: Joar Nango, Girjegumpi installed in Jokkmokk during the annual winter-market in February, 2018. Photo: Astrid Fadnes

In collaboration with Stockholm-based museum ArkDes, chief curator Carlos Mínguez Carrasco presents the museum's recent exhibition Kiruna Forever.

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria, Liam Young will present his latest short film, Planet City that imagines what a city that contains all the world's human inhabitants would look like. Image credit: Planet City (2020), Directed by Liam Young. Pictured here is the High Altitude Bot Herder. Costume Direction Ane Crabtree, Costume Artist Aneesa Shami, Mask Artist Liam Young. Modelled by David Freeland Jr. Photography by Direly S

Alia Farid is an artist who lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico. She is the curator of The Space Between Classrooms, a forthcoming exhibition at the Swiss Institute in New York. Image: Marco Abarca
Ve!, 2020 Process drawing for digital platform entitled The Axis of Modern Violence Reminds (Gender Based Violence in PR Highschools), a violence landscape visualization with an overlay of a survey created by Olga Casellas and Marco Abarca on the occasion of The Space Between Classrooms
Courtesy of artist

waiwai is a Dubai-based studio formed of architects Wael Al Awar and Kenichi Teramoto. Through scientific experimentation and research, the architects are attempting to create a technological equivalent of Portland cement from the crystalized salt and minerals that form the UAE’s unique Sabkha. The project will form the UAE representation at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. Photo credit: Al Rowais & Jebel Ali

NXTHVN is a new national arts model that empowers emerging artists and curators of color through education and access founded by Titus Kaphar, Jason Price, and Jonathan Brand and designed by Deborah Berke Partners. Through intergenerational mentorship, professional development and cross-sector collaboration, NXTHVN accelerates professional careers in the arts. Image credit: Deborah Berke Partners

Led by Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg, SO—IL is an award-winning architectural design firm that envisions spaces for culture, learning and innovation. In conversation with Philip Tinari, director of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art SO—IL will present recent and under construction work in Shanghai and New York.

Abuelita is an animation production company located in the Delta, Tigre (Argentina), specialized in projects with social and environmental themes. The goal of El Futuro Imposible/The Impossible Future is to build an optimist vision of our future based on the most important ideas and movements of today. Photo credit: Abuelita

Francis Kéré is regarded as one of the world's most distinguished contemporary architects thanks to his pioneering of a communal approach to design and his commitment to sustainable materials as well as modes of construction. Inspired by a curiosity for the particularities of any given locality and its social tapestry, he has gathered a diverse, agile team at his Berlin-based Kéré Architecture office, to take on projects across four continents.

Feral Atlas, a fascinating online experience created by the anthropologists Anna Tsing, (author of The Mushroom at the End of the World), Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena and Feifei Zhou, offers an original and playful approach to studying the Anthropocene. Focused on the world's feral reactions to human intervention, the editors explore the structures and qualities that lie at the heart of the feral and make the phenomenon possible.

Mariana Ordóñez Grajales, founder of Comunal, photographer Onnis Luque and Indignación A.C., will present a collaborative reflection between the research project "TYPOLOGIES. Current state of traditional housing in Mexico" and the human right to habitat and self-determination.
Photo credit: Onnis Luque

Sumayya Vally is the founder and principal of Counterspace, a Johannesburg-based design studio. Her design, research and pedagogical practice is committed to finding expression for hybrid identity and contested territory. She uses Johannesburg as a laboratory for finding speculative histories, future archaeologies, and design languages; often with the intent to reveal the invisible. She is the lead designer for the Serpentine Pavilion 2020/20 Plus

The World Around is proud to be in residence at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2021.

Studio Ossidiana is a practice based in Rotterdam that works at the intersection of architecture, visual arts and design, led by Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti. They will be in conversation with Dr Mariana Pestana, the chief curator of the 2020 Istanbul Design Biennial, ‘Empathy Revisited’. Dr Pestana is an idependent curator interested in critical social practice and the role of fiction in design for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis.

Curator and educator Sepake Angiama, artistic director of Inava, and curator of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennale will be in conversation with French experience designer, director and founder of the University of the Underground, Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun. An award-winning director and experience designer, Dr Ben Hayoun is Designer of Experiences at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners based out of London. It was born to explore the systems that organise the world through food. They will be in discussion with architecture writer and curator Maite Borjbad of the Art Institute of Chicago to discuss the way in which their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture, ecology and geopolitics.

Professor Harriet Harris is dean of architecture at Pratt University, Brooklyn as well as an architect and activist and feminist. Dr Harriss will be in conversation with celebrated philosopher professor Timothy Morton, whose academic interests include literature and the environment, ecotheory, philosophy, biology, physical sciences, literary theory, food studies and much more.

Thomas Thwaites calls himself "a designer (of a more speculative sort)." His thoughtful projects look deeply at the science behind technology, as in the Toaster Project, which sent spiralling him into the history and techniques of metallurgy and ‘Goatman’, his attempt to escape the world of humanity to become a goat. Thomas will be talking about his work with Shanghai-based design curator and critic Aric Chen, former lead curator of architecture and design at M+ and curatorial director of Design Miami.

Curator and director of Haus der Kunst, Andrea Lissoni will be in conversation with filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Working in the space between cinema and contemporary art, and originally trained as an architect, Weerasethakul creates installations, videos, short and feature films that are often non-linear and transmit a strong sense of dislocation and otherworldliness.

Kunlé Adeyemi is a Nigerian architect, urbanist and creative researcher. Adeyemi is founder and principal of NLÉ, an architecture, design and urbanism practice, based in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Adeyemi was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2018 and has been widely recognised for his project Makoko Floating School, a prototype floating structure, built for the historic water community of Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria.

Andrés Jaque is director of the Advanced Architectural Design Program at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2003 he founded the Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLIN), bringing a transectional approach to architectural design; practicing architecture as the intervention on complex composites of relationships, where its agency is negotiated with the agency unfold by other entities. For this project for Earth Day, Jaque collaborates with Ivan L. Munuera, a New York-based scholar, critic, and curator working at the intersection of culture, technology, politics, and bodily practices in the modern period and on the global stage. Since 2015 he is developing his dissertation on the architecture of HIV/AIDS at Princeton University.

Walter Hood is a landscape and public artist creating urban spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring communal histories. Hood melds architectural and fine arts expertise with a commitment to designing ecologically sustainable public spaces that empower marginalized communities. Over his career, he has transformed traffic islands, vacant lots, and freeway underpasses into spaces that challenge the legacy of neglect of urban neighborhoods.

Cameron is a trained architect and community leader with 20+ years experience creating and implementing community development programs, educational programs, post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction and social impact initiatives. Having worked in 58 countries and developed shelter solutions to over two million people his recent activities have included building schools for 4500 refugee children in Jordan, mobile COVID19 health centers and advising on cultural sustainability and preservation projects in Japan and South Africa.

Kalyanee Mam is an award-winning filmmaker whose work is focused on art and advocacy. Born in Battambang, Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge regime, Kalyanee immigrated to the United States in 1981 with her family. Her debut documentary feature, A River Changes Course, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Feature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. She has directed the award-winning shorts Lost World and The Fight for Areng Valley and is currently working on a new feature documentary, The Fire and the Bird’s Nest.

Amanda Williams is a visual artist who trained as an architect. Williams’ creative practice employs color as a way to draw attention to the complexities of race, place and value in cities. The landscapes in which she operates are the visual residue of the invisible policies and forces that have misshapen most inner cities. Williams’ installations, paintings and works on paper seek to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar and in the process, raise questions about the state of urban space and citizenship in America.

Curator and writer Carson Chan will be reflecting with Design Earth, a collaborative practice led by El Hadi Jazairy and Rania Ghosn. The office’s work engages the geographic to open up a range of aesthetic and political concerns for architecture and urbanism.

Karen van Godtsenhoven, associate curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be speaking with Parisian designer Mats Rombaut about radical sustainability in the fashion industry. Rombaut is a multi-disciplinary creative currently based in Paris and founder of ROMBAUT, a vegan accessory brand with sustainability at its core.

Mona Chalabi is a data journalist who lives in New York. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, The Guardian and many more. She is also an illustrator whose work has been commended by the Royal Statistical Society. Her work has been exhibited at several galleries including the Tate, The Design Museum and the House of Illustration.

junya.ishigami+associates is one of the most exciting studios in architecture today. Established by Junya Ishigami in2004, the firm gained international recognition following the competition of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology's KAIT Workshop in 2007. The office was awarded Golden Lion for Best Project of the 12th Biennale in 2010 and just opened the Serpentine Pavilion. Image: Junya Ishigami, Botanical Farm Garden Art Biotop, 2018. Photo by junya.ishigami+associates.

Founded in Barcelona in 2004 by Alberto Veiga and Fabrizio Barozzi, this impressive young office was awarded Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 2015 for their Szczecin Philharmonic building, as well as RIBA Award for International Excellence for the FIne art Museum in Chur. Barozzi Veiga will present the latest new project, the Zürich Tanzhaus, completed in 2019. Image: Barozzi Veiga, Tanzhaus Zürich, 2019. Photo by Simon Menges.

Xu Tiantian is the founding principal of Beijing-based studio DnA _Design and Architecture. She has been recognised internationally for her work and was recently awarded the 2019 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architect. She will be presenting her studio’s extensive recent work in the revitalising process of two rural regions in China, Songyang and Zhejiang Province, an extensive process involving different heritage and regions. Image: Xu Tiantian, DnA, The Songyang Story, 2019. Photo by Wang Ziling.

Emmanuel Pratt was awarded the MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant in 2019. He is an urban designer creating a model of resident-driven community development in neighborhoods that have suffered the effects of long-term disinvestment. Pratt is co-founder and executive director of the Sweet Water Foundation (SWF), a nonprofit organization based on Chicago’s South Side that engages local residents in the cultivation and regeneration of social, environmental, and economic resources in their neighborhoods. Image: Emmanuel Pratt, Sweet Water Foundation. Photo courtesy John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Writer, journalist and campaigner Caroline Criado Perez is the author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Invisible Women reveals the systematic, and often unconscious bias behind the data and assumptions that construct our everyday life. She examines a world built for men and in particular the increasing reliance in all areas on algorithms which are usually designed by, and using large amounts of data on, men which affects everything from internet search results to job applications. Image: Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women, 2019.

David OReilly is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. He is the creator of the interactive experience and reality simulation game 'Everything'. Part game, part philosophical experiment, ‘Everything’ allows players to assume the role of almost anything in the universe, from bacteria and to bear, starlings and molecules. The work offers a way to experience our reality as a phenomenon of interdependent systems that can all perceive, think and interact differently while being driven by the same underlying rules. Image: David OReilly, Everything, 2017.

Guess what this century’s most valuable resource is? It’s you—and all your online behaviours, enriched data sets and millions of meta-data points. Writer, thinker and cultural critic Shumon Basar presents Age of You, an exhibition about what it means to be an individual today. Curated by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, with graphic design by Daly & Lyon, it includes over 70 visual contributors from the worlds of art, design, filmmaking, photography, performance and electronic music. Image: Shumon Basar, The Age of You, 2019.

One of the most influential curators in the design world, Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her expansive and investigative approach to curating combines design, architecture, art, science and technology. She will be presenting her 2019 exhibition Broken Nature shown at the XXII Triennale di Milano. Image: Paola Antonelli, Broken Nature, 2019. Photo by Gianluca Di Ioia.

Best of Luck with the Wall is a documentary short by US digital artist Josh Begley. The film observes in striking detail of the changing geography and geometries and the expansive, complex landscape that comprises the 2,000-mile long US-Mexico border. The film was made by cutting and collages over 200,000 satellite images downloaded from Google Maps. Image: Josh Begley, Best of Luck with the Wall, 2016.

One of the most prominent names in design today, Canadian-born Bruce Mau has written and/or designed more than 200 books, including the landmark S,M,L,XL, a seminal collaboration with Rem Koolhaas. His life’s work is dedicated to applying the power of design to transforming the world. His new book, MC24 - The principles for Designing Massive Change in your Life and Work will be published by Phaidon in 2020.

Nick Axel is an editor, architect, educator and theorist. Head of the Architectural Design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the deputy editor of e-flux architecture, Nick is positioned to be taking part in all the most relevant conversations in architecture today. In a new editorial project for e-flux ‘Are Friends Electric’, the publication asks: “at moment when we can no longer imagine a world without technology, it is vital to ask how we—the human inhabitants of this planet—imagine the world and its technologies?”

Living and working in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale, Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama engages in the formation of architectural spaces inspired by the promise and failure of modernity. His installations often use material cues such as worn jute sacks to draw narratives of labour and movement of goods. His work has been shown at 56, 57 and 58 Venice Biennale and documenta14. Image: Ibrahim Mahama, A Friend, 2019.

Based in Santiago, Chile, architect Cecilia Puga has run her practice since 1995. She has undertaken various scales of design projects from her iconic single family houses to social community work and urban planning. She will be presenting the years-long restoration and transformation of the historic 19th century Palacio Pereira into public library and exhibition halls.

Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop is an architect and curator working at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA) as Head of Architectural Affairs, where she is responsible for overseeing the planning and implementation of cultural institutions, museums and exhibitions. Since 2015, she heads the ‘Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy’, which received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the 2019 cycle as part of the Muharraq Revitalization Project. Image: Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop, Muharraq Revitalisation Project, Pearling Path Visitor's Centre, Valerio Oligiati, 2019. Photo by Archive Olgiati.

Something & Son explores social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and activism. They create permanent installations, functional sculptures and spaces for public performance that build communities, create new ecologies and force a reappraisal and understanding of some of the biggest social and environmental issues of our time. The Manuals is their latest long-term project that explores a new culture where humans create rather destroy ecosystems through our everyday actions and infrastructure. Image: Something & Son, The Manuals, 2019.

Eva Franch i Gilabert is the first female director of Architectural Association (AA) in London. She will be presenting Architecture in Translation, a project that launched this year with the goal of building a multilingual and multicultural approach to architecture today. As a school with more than 81 nationalities, where more than 40 languages are spoken, the project seeks to recognise the value of language in the production of space and ideas. Image: Eva Franch i Gilabert, Architecture in Translation, 2019. Art Direction, Pentagram.

Elizabeth Diller is a co-founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). Alongside co-founder Ricardo Scofidio, Liz’s cross-genre work has been distinguished with TIME’s "100 Most Influential People" list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture. Catherine Ince is Chief Curator of V&A East, a new two-site museum and collection research centre due to open in London’s Olympic Park in 2023. The pair will discuss their respective work at the forefront of new critical institutional practice. Image: V&A East. Photo by Diller Scofidio + Renfo, 2018.

Shohei Shigematsu is a Partner at OMA based in its New York office, an has lead the firm’s diverse portfolio in the Americas for the past decade. Shohei will discuss his engagements within the art world to focus on the changing demands and needs of cultural institutions of different typologies including two forthcoming museum expansion projects, the Albright Knox Art Gallery and the New Museum. Image: Shohei Shigematsu, OMA, New Museum alongside its expansion. Photo courtesy OMA.

For Extinct in New York, an exhibition on Governors Island with the Swiss Institute, artist Michael Wang researched native plant, lichen, and algae species native to NY but which no longer grow naturally in any of the five boroughs. He installed four bespoke greenhouses containing a selection of these organisms and trained a team of caretakers to maintain them. The plants were then reintroduced into parks and gardens in New York City. Image: Michael Wang, Platanthera Ciliaris, 2019.

Designer, academic and author Julia Watson is a leading expert on indigenous technologies, as seen in her monograph Lo—TEK Design by Radical Indigenism, a global exploration of indigenous architectural innovations. Lo—TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. Watson will share this compelling new research arguing that it is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.

Liam Young is an Australian born film director and architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. The music video Choreographic Camouflage takes place in a near future city that sees everything through sensors and scanners. An underground community has developed strategies to disappear to the eyes of technology. In collaboration with choreographer Jacob Jonas, a new vocabulary of movement has been designed to disguise their bodies from detection algorithms used by the city’s control networks. The animated film prototypes a sub-cultural movement that may soon emerge in response to imminent smart city technologies. Image: Still from Where the City Can’t See: Choreographic Camouflage.

Featuring a selection of vanguard and diverse publications from around the globe including books, magazines and self-published materials specially selected for The World Around visitors, the Head Hi Book Kiosk will be a hub for inspiration and reference. With many of the titles featuring the day's participants, Head Hi welcomes all attendees to learn more about the conference’s key themes. Head Hi is a book and coffee shop founded by Alexandra Hodkowski and is located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard.