With over twenty-five years of proven experience authoring and implementing visionary urban
architecture, Vishaan Chakrabarti is the Founder and Creative Director of Practice for
Architecture and Urbanism | PAU, where he leads the firm’s growing global portfolio of cultural,
institutional, and public projects.

"While it is not fair, the brunt of climate change will fall on younger generations, as will the impetus to help address it. Rather than bemoan this condition, the Young Climate Prize celebrates the optimism, creative intelligence, and potential of our youth around the planet."

Elizabeth Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), a design studio whose practice spans the fields of architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print. Diller and co-founding partner, Ric Scofidio have been distinguished with Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture.

Principal of Counterspace, an award-winning architecture and research studio, based between Johannesburg and London, Sumayya Vally’s design, research and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and territory, particularly for African and Islamic conditions. Her design process is often forensic, and draws on the aural, performance, the supernatural, and the overlooked as generative places of history and work.

"Our responses to climate change need to involve entirely different approaches - not only bound by our present systems but also imagining outside of them. The ethos and spirit of the Young Climate Prize - that of collaboration, learning and experimentation - are needed more than ever."

Aric Chen is General and Artistic Director of Het Nieuwe Instituut, The Netherlands' national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture, in Rotterdam.

"Architecture and design are how we link complex ideas, needs and issues, and then articulate and manifest them into how we live and interact. They are one of the main ways in which we shape our relationship to the planet, and in that sense, they are indispensable to addressing the climate crisis."

Frida Escobedo is a Mexican Architect. She stablished her studio in Mexico City in 2006. In 2018 she became the youngest architect to design the prestigous Serpentine Pavilon in London. Escobedo has won numerous awards like the Architectural League of New York's Young Architects Forum Award (2009), Premio BIAU (2014), Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award (2016) and the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award (2017). Currently, aside from running her studio, Frida Escobedo teaches at Yale University in the US.

Xu Tiantian is the founding principal of DnA _Design and Architecture. She has received numerous awards such as the WA China Architecture Award in 2006 and 2008, the Architectural League New York’s Young Architects Award in 2008, the Design Vanguard Award in 2009 by Architecture Record and the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architect in 2019. In 2020, she was appointed an Honorary Fellow of American Institute of Architects.

"The climate crisis is becoming the defining challenge of our world, which will have greater impact on our younger generations. It will take efforts of many generations to fight the change. The Young Climate Prize provides an opportunity to build up the climate and environmental awareness as the fundamental principle to our profession."

José Esparza Chong Cuy is a curator, writer, and architect from Mexico. He currently serves as the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. Prior to Storefront, he worked as Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museo Jumex in Mexico City.

"It is important to support future generations and this prize will serve as an example for others to invest in youth programs."

Jing Liu was born in Nanjing, China in 1980. After studying in China, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, concluding with a Master of Architecture from Tulane University School of Architecture in New Orleans, Liu founded Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu (SO - IL) with Dutch architect Florian Idenburg in 2008.

Susan Sellers is a founding partner and executive creative director of 2x4 and Senior Design Critic at Yale School of Art. At 2x4, she leads projects across cultural and commercial sectors, from brand strategy and identity to brand experience programs and exhibitions. Her clients include Samsung, Hyundai, Google, Lincoln Center, the Fondazione Prada, Guggenheim, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and many others. From 2013 to 2016, Sellers was Head of Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she led design initiatives from brand identity and visitor experience to exhibition and permanent gallery installation.

Mariana Pestana is an architect and independent curator interested in critical social practice and the role of fiction in design for an age marked by technological progress and ecological crisis. Pestana gained a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture. Previously, she worked as a curator at the Department of Architecture, Design and Digital at the V&A Museum and lectured at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Arts, Royal College of Arts, Universidade do Minho and Sandberg Institute.

David OReilly is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Starting as an animator, he created numerous short films and inspired a wave of digital aesthetics. In collaboration with Spike Jonze, he created the holographic video games in the film Her, and went on to develop interactive nature simulations such as Mountain and the universe scale Everything. His pioneering AR works have received over 3 billion views across the web.

"I would like to help motivate the next generation to think radically about how to move forward on the subject of the environment."

Etta Madete is an architectural designer at BuildX Studio (formerly Orkidstudio), a lecturer and researcher at the University of Nairobi and an Aspen 2020 New Voices fellow. She focuses of affordable sustainable housing. Madete is currently creating sustainable, low-income housing developments in Nairobi that supplement existing structures. Using innovative and a creative design approaches, Etta aims to build communities and neighborhoods that foster health and well-being.

Carson Chan is the inaugural Director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment, and a Curator in the Museum’s Department of Architecture and Design. He develops, leads, and implements the Ambasz Institute’s manifold research initiatives through a range of programs, including exhibitions, public lectures, conferences, seminars, and publications. Before joining MoMA in 2021, he worked as an architecture writer, curator, and educator.

"Our role is to lead with the changes necessary to make the planet livable in the future. The building sector is the most polluting industry, contributing to 40% of the world’s yearly greenhouse gases. Everyone involved, especially architects, needs to acknowledge our debt."

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 goal is to promote design’s understanding, until its positive influence on the world is universally acknowledged. Her work investigates design’s impact on everyday experience, often including overlooked objects and practices, and combining design, architecture, art, science, and technology. Among her most recent exhibitions are the XXII Triennale di Milano Broken Nature and MoMA’s Material Ecology, on the groundbreaking work of architect Neri Oxman.

"Design helps people change, evolve, and repair. It is fundamental and necessary."

Sandra Jackson-Dumont received her B.A. in art history from Sonoma State University in California and her M.A. in art history from Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 2020, after a long career in museums she became director and CEO of the Lucas Museum in Los Angeles. Jackson-Dumont held positions at the Studio Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, served for eight years as the deputy director for education and public programs and adjunct curator in modern and contemporary art at the Seattle Art Museum and was the Head of Education at the Met Museum in NYC.

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. From their early works –SGAE Headquarters, Hemeroscopium House or The Truffle in Spain– to their most recent –Ensamble Fabrica in Madrid and Ca'n Terra in Menorca, Spain–, every project makes space for experimentation aiming to advance their field. Antón and Débora are committed to sharing ideas and cultivating synergies between professional and academic worlds through teaching, lecturing and researching: she is Critic At Large at Pratt Institute in NYC and he is a Professor at MIT, where they co-founded the POPlab –​Prototypes of Prefabrication Laboratory​– in 2012.

"Climate is an inherent part of architecture and one of the biggest challenges of our time."

Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Sherpa for the UN 2023 Water Conference. Former sr advisor for president Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and Principal of Rebuild by Design. Initiator and lead for Water as Leverage. Former Director General for Planning and Water and Director National Spatial Planning for the Netherlands. Teaches at LSE, Harvard GSD and University of Groningen.

"Given that the majority of global carbon emissions come from buildings and cars, and that the form and experience of human habitation will determine the destiny of every species on the planet, the relevance of architecture and design that actually addresses these issues will be paramount to our collective survival."

Alice Rawsthorn is an award-winning design critic and author, whose books include Hello World: Where Design Meets Life and Design as an Attitude. Her weekly design column for The New York Times was syndicated worldwide for over a decade. She is co-founder with Paola Antonelli of Design Emergency, a research platform that explores design’s role in building a better future. All Alice’s work champions design’s potential as a social, political and ecological tool.

"The climate emergency is one of the most important challenges of our time and the Young Climate Prize promises to inspire and empower the next generation of designers, architects and engineers - professional and otherwise - to address it."

Wael Al Awar is a co-founder and principal architect at waiwai. With interests in natural phenomena, landscape and formless diagrams of relations, Wael has a multi-disciplinary approach to design. By aligning with natural phenomena, Wael seeks to create an architecture that is more than man-made fabrication, but instead remains open to adaptation and appropriation. The spaces that emerge from his approach are site-specific provocations that encourage unexpected experiences, activities and behaviors. Wael Al Awar was Curator of the National Pavillion of the UAE at the 17th Architecture Bienalle di Venezia 2020 & 2021, recipient of the Golden Lion Award.

"We are custodians of the planet and posses the skills to lead multidisciplinary teams and conversations in finding solutions to our climate crisis. We need to support and nurture young talent as they are our future."

Tatiana Bilbao, architect, began her eponymous studio in 2004. Prior to founding her firm, Bilbao was an Advisor in the Ministry of Development and Housing of the Government of the Federal District of Mexico City. Bilbao has been recognized with the Kunstpreis Berlin in 2012, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize by the LO-CUS Foundation in 2014, the Marcus Prize Award 2019, Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal of the ACSA 2020, and the Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) en 2021.

"To create awareness of the urgent necessity of rethinking architecture."

Alder Keleman Saxena is an Assistant Research Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and holds a concurrent position as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway. As an environmental anthropologist, her research has examined the relationships linking agricultural biodiversity to human food cultures in Mexico and Bolivia, drawing connections between locally specific ethnobotanical and biocultural practices and larger political-economic contexts. Her more recent research and writing explores the social and material implications of digital connectivity for geographically remote spaces. Alder is a co-editor of Feral Atlas: the More-Than-Human Anthropocene.

Kabage Karanja is an architect and spelunker. He founded Cave_bureau in 2014 alongside Stella Mutegi. He is a natural environment enthusiast leading the bureau's geological and anthropological investigations into architecture and nature, orchestrating expeditions and surveys into caves within the Great Rift Valley. He is a serial sketcher and storyteller, driven to script and communicate cave de-colonial thinking and practice in relation to the built and natural environment. Kabage is a co-convener of an upcoming Advanced Studio summer 2022 programme at GSAAP Columbia University, Was a participant at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice 2021, and awarded a Special Mention for the installation titled “The Anthropocene Museum's Obsidian Rain”; He participant at The World Around Summit, Guggenheim Museum, 2021; Exhibitor at the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, 2019-20; participant of the London Festival of Architecture, 2018. Karanja lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya.

"Our role is to lead with the changes necessary to make the planet livable in the future. The building sector is the most polluting industry, contributing to 40% of the world’s yearly greenhouse gases. Everyone involved, especially architects, needs to acknowledge our debt."

Julian Oliver is a Critical Engineer, educator, artist, archer, and activist. His work and lectures have been presented at many conferences, museums, festivals and international electronic-art events including Transmediale, the Chaos Computer Congress, Ars Electronica, Tate Modern, FILE, The Vienna Biennale, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Oliver has received several awards, most notably the distinguished Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2011 for the project Newstweek (with Daniil Vasiliev). He is the co-author of the Critical Engineering Manifesto, member of the Critical Engineering Working Group, and co-founder of Crypto Party in Berlin, who’s shared studio Weise7 hosted the first three crypto-parties (unrelated to cryptocurrency) worldwide.

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.

BlackSpace is a urbanist collective. Their mission is to bring together planners, architects, artist and designers to create a national network of Black urbanists. They have been working since 2015 and published their BlackSpace Manifesto in 2019.

Joseph Grima is the creative director of Design Academy Eindhoven and co-founder of research studio Space Caviar. Grima graduated from Architectural Association in 2003 and then became the curator of the Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk, the Istanbul Design Biennial and the director of Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. She is currently the managing director of Community Design Agency where she works with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. A graduate of Columbia University’s GSAPP in New York City, Sandhya’s prior experiences span multiple countries include working at an interdisciplinary design firm based in Singapore, and prior to that at the San Francisco based non-profit, Architecture for Humanity.

"The Young Climate Prize is an excellent opportunity to include young people from marginalized communities in this very pressing and important conversation around the climate crisis. In developing countries where the youth make up for a large percentage of the population, they are uniquely positioned to hold governments and decision makers accountable. It may seem like it is too late in the game to be able to reverse the damage done, however, an opportunity to equip young people with the right tools and thinking brings much hope that they will make better decisions for our planet as future carers and stewards of their communities."