List of participant

Courage Kpodo
Ending well

Kpodo’s work explores the transformations in built and cultivated spaces through writing, film, photography, curation, and architecture. His research-driven work has been featured in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennial, the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival, and the BBC. He was the lead curator for the inaugural biennial edition of LagosPhoto Festival 2025, with the theme Incarceration. He is presently developing an architectural framework for land-stewardship in the first cocoa-producing region in Ghana, a continuation of his 2025 thesis developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Leyuan Li
Your Greenhouse Is Your Kitchen

Leyuan Li is the director of Office for Roundtable and an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Colorado. His creative work has been supported by the Art Omi and MacDowell Fellowships, and featured on leading design platforms, including ArchDaily, Dezeen, PLOT, and The Architect’s Newspaper. Recent projects have been exhibited at Tulane University, the University of Houston, and Pratt Institute, and presented at the São Paulo International Architecture Biennale, the Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (Shenzhen), and the History Colorado Center in Denver. Office for Roundtable has received numerous national and international recognitions, including being named a finalist for the 2025 Dezeen Awards and receiving an Honorable Mention in The Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of Practice Awards.

Sebastián Carvajal
Marine Food Architectures for Ecological Regeneration in Chilean Patagonia

Sebastián Carvajal is an architect and filmmaker. He lives and works in southern Chile, where he develops a practice that brings together architecture and audiovisual media as tools for design and critical research. His work understands architecture not only as a built object, but as a form of thinking capable of articulating territory, infrastructure, materiality, and culture across different scales, connecting local contexts from the Global South with contemporary discussions on ecology, production, and transforming ways of inhabiting.

He directs an audiovisual studio dedicated to the documentation of architecture, territory, and creative processes, where moving image and photography do not operate as final records, but as active instruments for thinking, narrating, and producing knowledge.

In parallel, he develops an academic career as a professor at Universidad del Desarrollo (Chile), teaching at undergraduate and master’s levels. His work has been published and recognized in international and national contexts, including the Biennale College Architettura 2024–2025 (Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia), Trama Magazine (Ecuador), the Chilean Wood Corporation Competition (CORMA), and the Chile Diseño Awards 2025, in the Applied Research category.

José Luis de Vicente
The Storm: Architectures of Vernacular Geoengineering

Jose Luis de Vicente is a curator, cultural researcher and artistic director based In Barcelona and working internationally. His work explores the space between social innovation, new ecological practices and the aesthetics and politics of computation.

He is, along with Eva Franch I Gilabert, the cofounder and principal of FAST, a transdisciplinary curatorial platform and design lab dedicated to addressing current and future challenges through the convergence of culture, technology, architecture, and design. Previously De Vicente was director of DHUB, Barcelona’s Design Museum, for Design, and founder and artistic director of Sónar+D, the culture and arts program of the acclaimed Sónar Festival.

He was cofounder and codirector of MODEL, Barcelona’s festival of Architectures, and Tentacular, a festival of Critical Technologies and Digital Adventures in Matadero (Madrid). He has been curator of FutureEverything Festival (Manchester) and LlumBCN, Barcelona’s festival of Light Arts.

He has curated more than 25 exhibitions in institutions across the whole planet including museums and cultural centers like CCCB (Barcelona), ArtsScience Museum (Singapore), Somerset House (London), MIT Museum (Cambridge, US), Museo Reina Sofia and Espacio Fundación Telefónica (Madrid), among many.

Manuela Valtchanova
Anarchaeological practices for radical imagination

Arturo Frediani, Larry Barham and R. Adriana Hernandez and Lara Alcaina
Origin and Evolution of Architecture. On Human architectural ethology

Delving into the Evolutionary Aesthetics of Architecture through his PhD research at UPC, architect and URV professor Arturo Frediani collaborates with fellow architect and URV researcher Lara Alcaina, alongside two internationally renowned scientists—archaeologist Larry Barham (PhD, University of Liverpool; Director of the Deep Roots Humanity Project, Zambia) and evolutionary anthropologist R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar (PhD, Serra Hunter Professor, University of Barcelona)—in order to combine their expertise to help redefine the very nature of architecture.

Sophie Falkeis
Turning the Ecological Gears

Sophie Falkeis is a multidisciplinary designer based in Vienna and Zurich, working at the intersection of science, art and design. Her work investigates evolutionary mechanisms under anthropogenic influence by envisioning future scenarios of multi-species cohabitation.
Her work is part of the MAK permanent collection and has been exhibited in London, Vienna, Eindhoven, Almere, Beijing, Bern, Berlin, Copenhagen and Gothenburg and was featured in the New York Times. She has previously worked at Iris van Herpen Couture in Amsterdam and was a research fellow at Terreform One in New York City.

Sophie gave a keynote at the 2023 Species on the Move Conference in Florida, spoke at the Centre for Marine Socioecology Tasmania, PRIMER21 Global San Francisco, DDW Talks Eco Pioneers, as well as other international conferences, and most recently at UNESCO HQ in Paris. For her work, she has been awarded a START-Stipendium by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts & Culture and the Planet Love Prize by the Vienna Business Agency.

Alongside her independent practice, Sophie currently acts as Co-Pi of the project ECHOES – funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation – at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, ETH-Domain, in Zurich.
sophiefalkeis.com

A Gang of Three
Alluvial Decoder (City of Raleigh Storm Memorial)

A Gang of Three is a globally recognized, socially focused multidisciplinary public art and planning practice based in the United States.

By design, our practice operates within an ever-evolving gradient of public art, architecture, landscape architecture, installation, urban planning, ecology, and advocacy. We leverage our unique perspectives and strengths to tackle such critical issues as human rights, climate change, resilience, social justice, data, remembrance, and migration, among others.

At its core, our work is intended to promote positive change and bring disparate people together. Intentionally subtle, our work takes its time to settle in, causing viewers/participants to have to think critically to meaningfully engage with it so as not to elicit immediate reactions – allowing for a true sense of discovery and often framing unexpected and differing perspectives.

Equally nuanced is the makeup of our highly collaborative and multidisciplinary practice, as it’s intentionally like having 10 toes within 10 different disciplines, all however deeply rooted in meaningful storytelling and with a deep focus on doing social good within the built environment.

Arsomsilp Community and Environmentat Architects and Turenscape
Benjakitti Forest Park

Arsomsilp Community and Environmental Architect is a multidisciplinary practice advancing participatory, community-based design across architecture and landscape. Chatchanin Sung is Studio Director of the Landscape Studio. With over 17 years of international experience, she leads urban and ecological landscape projects that integrate nature and community. She specializes in nature-based design that restores ecosystems and strengthens urban resilience and livability, shaping sustainable futures.

Carles Enrich
Environmental restoration of Rec Comtal in Vallbona

Fins ací (it ends here). Paiporta, Valencia, October 29, 2024
Milena Villalba

OESST
P.A.R.C. – Previous atmospheres recovery chapters

OESST is run by Adrià Escolano and David Steegmann.
OESST explores landscapes at all scales, operating within a structure without defined size or organization. It forms connections with other disciplines to undertake projects ranging from academic or domestic contexts to urban planning and landscape.
OESST works through narrative, pragmatism, irony, precision, and an amateur spirit, in order to identify those minimal and essential actions upon which the entire project can be built.
OESST combines professional practice with teaching at ESTAV, EINA, and La Salle.

Openact architecture
Tuzla Stream Co-habitat: Urban Regeneration through Waterscapes

Zuhal Kol and Carlos Zarco Sanz are the founding partners of Openact, an architecture and urban design studio based in Istanbul and Madrid. Their work explores the continuity and transformative potential of spatial production through public-space projects at multiple scales, with a strong focus on the relationships between public space, infrastructure, and ecological inputs. Openact approaches design both as a critical tool and as a practice that generates collective imaginaries for more inclusive futures.

Through its built work and research-driven approach, Openact has received national and international recognition, including the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction, the New European Bauhaus Prize, Türkiye’s National Architecture Awards, an Aga Khan Award for Architecture Committee Nomination, the COAM Award, multiple Europan prizes, and the GEMMS Young Architects Award. These processes have led to projects at different scales, curatorial collaborations, and publications across contexts worldwide.

Alongside practice, Kol and Zarco Sanz remain deeply engaged in academia, leading studios and teaching in Istanbul and Madrid. Their pedagogy encourages interdisciplinary thinking, questions modes of representation, and integrates creative research into architectural education.

TAV
Waycha Mayu Urban Biological Corridor

Carlos Zeballos-Velarde
Becoming More-than-Human: Ecological Coexistence in the Urban Linkages Project

Architect, graduated from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (2016) and PhD from the same institution (2025). Researcher at the Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona (UPC), he teaches at ETSAB (UPC) and UdG. In 2017, he co-founded andrea + joan arquitectes with Andrea Capilla, working across architecture, interior design, and urbanism with an approach centred on use, place, and continuity with existing contexts. The practice has received several awards and contributed numerous publications as well as academic and professional lecture series.

Kathy Velikov
Becoming Biomass: a future history of regional biomaterial transition

Kathy Velikov is Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Creative Practice at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Kathy is a leader in practice-based design research and education, advancing environmentally responsive, technologically enabled, and climate positive built environments through speculation, prototyping, and visualization for responsive architectural material assemblies, resilient multifunctional urban infrastructures, and territorial practices for decarbonization. She is a licensed architect and former president of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). RVTR, her research-based practice co-founded with partner Geoffrey Thün, serves as a lab for exploration and experimentation in the intertwinements between architecture, the environment, technology, and sociopolitics. Kathy’s projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally and have received multiple awards. She has published two books – Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural (Actar, 2022) and Infra Eco Logi Urbanism (Park Books, 2015) – and her work and writing has been published in numerous journals and book chapters.

Fernanda Córdova
Brownfields

Fernanda Córdova Porte is a Chilean architect based in Barcelona, Spain. Her work focuses on urban regeneration, territorial analysis, and circular land use, combining a GIS-based approach with strong visual communication through maps, diagrams, and visualizations.

On her master’s thesis in UPC, “Brownfields: analysis, diagnosis, and guidelines for redevelopment in Santiago de Chile”, she developed a replicable workflow to identify, characterize, and prioritize brownfield sites at metropolitan scale, translations spatial diagnosis into an operational cadaster and actionable redevelopment criteria.

Her experience also includes architectural design and prototyping using mining tailings to develop construction materials, as well as teaching assistance in Santiago de Chile at Universidad Diego Portales.

Joan Martí
Learning from Garcia Faria: Circular Metabolism in the late XIX

Architect, graduated from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (2016), and PhD from the same institution (2025). Researcher at the Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona, he is currently teaching at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB, UPC) and at the University of Girona (UdG).
In 2017, together with Andrea Capilla, he co-founded the practice andrea + joan arquitectes, which operates across multiple scales in the fields of architecture, interior design, and urbanism, with an approach centred on use, place, and continuity with existing contexts. Throughout his professional trajectory, the practice has received several awards for both built work and design competitions, and has contributed to numerous publications as well as academic and professional lecture series.

Rocio Calzado
The Great Together
Beyond demolition, architectures of care. Sociotechnical taxonomy of housing estates

Rocío Calzado is a Spanish architect and political scientist based in Paris. She is the co-founder, together with Jasper Meurer, of Docar, a documentary film practice focused on housing rights and care politics. She is an associate lecturer at ENSA Paris-Est and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Her academic research is conducted at the STS laboratory LATTS and uses sociotechnical methods to study maintenance practices in architecture, particularly within the field of social housing.

Pere Joan Ravetllat
Open Regeneration of Housing Estates in Barcelona

Pere Joan Ravetllat Mira. Doctor Arquitecte. Master Science of Building Design en la Columbia University de New York. 1985. Catedràtic d’ universitat 2016. Responsable del curs de Projectes “Habitatge i Ciutat”, un curs centrat en la contribució del programa residencial als entorns urbans . Autor de varias monografíes sobre el tema de l’habitatge i artícles d’opinió publicats en revistes d’àmbit nacional e internacional. Ha estat membre de jurats i premis internacionals i ha donat conferencies o ha estat professor visitante en diverses escoles d’arquitectura espanyoles i europees. Director de la línea de Rehabilitació i Restauració del MBArch ETSAB UPC. Coordinador del Grup de Recerca REARQ des del que es desenvolupen diferents línies de treball al voltant de la rehabilitació.
Entre la seva experiència professional a la rehabilitació hi ha que destacar les seguents intervencions en edificis amb un alt reconeixement patrimonial. Casa Golferichs. Barcelona 1985 y 2020, Can Regàs. Girona 2.000, Casa Muley Afid. Barcelona 2001, 2007, Fábrica Marfà. Girona 2007, La Remunta. L’Hospitalet 2013, Mercado de Sant Antoni. Barcelona 2018 Balneari de Can Rius Caldes de Montbui 2024. Can 60 Barcelona 2025.

Tosin Oshinowo
Alternative urbanism: self-organising markets of Lagos

Tosin Oshinowo is a Lagos-based Nigerian architect and the founder and principal of Oshinowo Studio, established in 2013. Her practice spans civic, commercial, and residential projects across Nigeria and is recognised for its socially responsive approach to architecture, design, and urbanism. Key projects include a United Nations Development Programme initiative to build a new community in northern Nigeria for a village displaced by Boko Haram, the Maryland Mall in Lagos, and Adidas’ West African flagship store.

Her curatorial and research practice focuses on culture, identity, and urbanism in the Global South. She co-curated the second Lagos Biennial in 2019, curated the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial in 2023, collaborated with Lexus International for Design Miami 2020, and received a Special Mention at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale.

A registered architect in Nigeria and a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, she previously worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in London and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam in 2008.

She holds degrees from Kingston University London, University College London, the Architectural Association, and IE University Madrid, and is a 2025 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Daniel Torrego
Scrap Oriented Urbanism – Speculative cartography for socio-material urbanism

Daniel Torrego is a Spanish architect-researcher whose PhD work framed Material Ecology as a practical design methodology. He approaches every project as an experiment “in the making,” testing how matter, climate dynamics and social use can inform one another.

Operating across architectural practice, academic research and cultural programming, he pursues an open yet hands-on approach to architecture—one that understands design as something constructed over time, in close relationship with place, material and use.

Edgar Mazo
Park in the Prado Neighborhood – Life in a Garden

Edgar Mazo is an architect graduated from the National University of Colombia and holds a Master’s degree in Urban and Environmental Processes from EAFIT University. He was a co-founder of Paisajes Emergentes in 2008 and Laboratorio de Arquitectura y Paisaje in 2013. He currently directs the studio Connatural Architecture in the Landscape, focusing his efforts on addressing socio-environmental conflicts through landscape architecture. His professional practice has been centered on the development of projects at different scales, combined with teaching activities in universities in Colombia and Latin America, at Escola da Cidade in São Paulo, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina, among other. He has been invited to serve as a jury member in various architecture and landscape biennials and has received recognition in numerous national and international competitions, including the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction, the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, the Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize, the Latin American Landscape Architecture Biennial, and the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BIAU)

Jorge Vidal
Renaturalization of Liconsa Parking

Jorge Vidal is an architect who graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona in 2005. In 2004 he studied at the Academy of Architecture of Mendrisio in the atelier of Peter Zumthor and Valerio Olgiati. In 2003 he studied in Greece with Elia Zenghelis thanks to a scholarship awarded to him by the Mies Van der Rohe Foundation. After completing a Master’s Degree in Projects, he is currently preparing his PhD at the ETSAB.

From 2021 to date he has been directing the SUUN Unit at ETSALS. From 2008 to 2019 he was a professor in the Projects workshop at ETSAB. At the same time, he was director of the series of conferences known as ESARQ Forums at the International University of Catalonia from 2010 to 2016. He gives lectures at different architecture schools and institutions as well as being a jury member for different awards. At the same time, he regularly writes articles on architecture.

From 2008 to 2015, Jorge Vidal and Víctor Rahola worked together as Rahola Vidal Arquitectes. In 2015 Jorge Vidal founded his current architecture studio.

The studio’s work has been recognized with various national awards such as the FAD Award and the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism

Anne Gross
House-04: Reviving through Careful Inhabitation

Anne Gross is the co-founder of Studio GROSS, an experimental spatial practice based in Tokyo that views architecture as a discipline of euphoria. Through curation and filmmaking, they broaden their planning scope and aim to share insights into the building industry. In addition to collaborations with institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Swiss Architectural Museum in Basel, film also serves as a means of project documentation.
Originally from Berlin, Anne and her partner trained as generalists through a traveling European master’s program in architecture. After several years of work, they felt the profession needed to step out of its comfort zone to achieve greater self-efficacy. Consequently, they left Berlin and, a few years later, established Studio GROSS as an experimental exhibition space, which evolved into an office focused on neighborhood projects in Tokyo. Their work concentrates on renovation work in response to the rising vacancy rate in the Japanese capital and advocates for existing buildings as valuable resources.
Anne’s research at the Institute of Science, Tokyo, grounds her practice within a theoretical framework that explores the socioeconomic principles of urban systems through walking.

Adrià Goula
Palimpest: Overwriting architecture

Caroline Stokholm
The Invisible Hands

Danish architect working at the intersection of spatial research, architectural analysis, and storytelling. Her practice explores film and narrative as analytical and communicative tools to examine the relationship between architecture, landscape, and everyday life.

She holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy and completed part of her studies at Università IUAV di Venezia, focusing on climate adaptation and water-based urban strategies. Her work is driven by a holistic understanding of architecture, where social structures, cultural heritage, and ecological systems are read as interconnected spatial conditions.

She recently presented the triptych film project ‘Punktbyen’, developed in interdisciplinary collaboration with photographer Jenny Amdi Sørensen. Through three short films, the project investigates modernist housing typologies, addressing questions of landscape, daily life, and social transformation through a poetic, research-based approach to architectural communication.

Tina Gregoric
Circular Building Cultures: 1:1 Design Research Methodology

Tina Gregoric, an architect, educator, and researcher, integrates design, research, and pedagogy to address social and climate challenges. She is a Professor at TU Wien, where she leads the Research Unit Architectural Typology and Design. With her team, she explores resilient architecture, circular building cultures, and bioregional materials, emphasizing social interaction, adaptive reuse, and post-extractivist design. They employ 1:1 design research methodologies that link teaching, research, and material experimentation. Collaborating with the LINA European Architecture Platform and industry partners, they investigate how local waste streams and material flows can transform into architectural resources in rural and urban contexts, positioning universities as agents of regenerative spatial change and knowledge sharing. Tina co-founded Dekleva Gregoric Architects, an internationally awarded practice working across the EU and US on housing, cultural buildings, and public revitalization. Their research extends to participatory design and nanotourism as a responsible alternative to overtourism. Through collaborative experimentation and critical design, she advances architecture as a socially embedded and ecologically responsive practice.

Juana Colombo
Performative Earth Walls: Climate-Responsive Geometry for 3D-Printing

Juana Colombo (Buenos Aires, 1994) is an architect and researcher focused on adaptive geometries and material systems for enhanced thermal performance. She holds a degree with honors from the University of Buenos Aires (FADU–UBA) and completed postgraduate studies in 3D printing at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), where she investigated additive manufacturing, material experimentation, and developed a full-scale performative wall, earning an award for outstanding performance. She currently works at Mesura and independently pursues research on 3D-printed earth structures and environmentally responsive architecture. Her professional experience includes projects in Buenos Aires and Berlin, contributing to large-scale cultural architecture.

Younes Ben Slimane
All Come From Dust

Younès Ben Slimane is a tunisian filmmaker, visual artist and architect based between Tunis (TN) and Paris (FR).
His work has been showcased at the Documenta fifteen Mobile Lab in Kassel (DE), the Mucem in Marseille (FR), the Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain in Dakar (SN), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje (MK), the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (FR), the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio (US), among others.
His recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Zaha Hadid Foundation in London (UK) and the Galeria de Arte Cinemática in Vila do Conde (PT).
His films have been selected for international festivals, including the Locarno Film Festival (CH), CPH:DOX (DK), DokuFest (XK), and the Prismatic Ground Film Festival in New York (US), among others..

Carla Ferrer
Mass Madera: Advancing Industrialized Timber Construction in Spain

Carla Ferrer is an architect and urbanist, graduated from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and ETSAB at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. She is founding partner of ITER in Milan and has received the IKEA Swiss Foundation Grant and Real Colegio Complutense Fellowship. She co-curated Touch Wood (2022) and the Materials Room at the Spanish Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2025), and coordinates the Mass Madera program at Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.

Yalei Zhu
CO-POIESIS: Reused-Timber-Pavilion by Robotic Fabrication in Biennale Architettura 2025

Yalei Zhu is a Master’s student in Architecture at Tongji University, currently focusing on sustainable materials and construction methods. Her research and findings have been published in renowned international journals and conferences, including the Journal of Transport Geography, CAAD Futures, eCAADe, and CAADRIA. She has been awarded the National Scholarship five times during both her undergraduate and master’s studies, a distinction given to only 0.2% of students in China.

Yalei Zhu has been involved in the construction and coordination of the CO-POIESIS project for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2025, she represented Tongji University and collaborated with institutions such as MIT, ETH and PoliTO, organizing the Construction Future Lab workshop and delivering a keynote speech.

Within the framework of #UIA2026BCN, Yalei Zhu joins the thematic pillar Becoming Circular, exploring how architecture can evolve through material reuse and digital technologies, particularly through an in-depth investigation of post-storm timber reuse and digital fabrication processes.

Francisco Parada.
Compluvium Pavilion

P + S Estudio de Arquitectura is directed by Francisco Parada (PhD Architect) and Laura R. Salvador (Architect, MSc in Urban Studies), who focus their work on researching about processes of indeterminacy, complexity and entropy, and their application to the practice of architecture and urbanism, incorporating variables such as randomness and uncertainty. Their approach also establishes a deep concern for detail, the physical understanding of matter and the cultural and vernacular character of each place.
Their work has been published in various national and international media, and has also been part of exhibitions in Spain, France and Chile. They have been distinguished with a COAM 2025 Award, the NAN Sustainability 2025 Award and a MATCOAM 2025 Honourable Mention, being also finalists at the CSCAE 2023 Awards and receiving an Honourable Mention in COAM Emergente 2023 Award. Their work has been part of the selection of the XVI and XVII Spanish BEAU and the FAD Awards (2023 and 2025).

Anne Beim
Regenerative Biogenic Façades for extreme climates

Anne Beim is Professor in Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture. (RDA).
She holds a M.Arch. and a Ph.D. in architecture from the RDA
As a Visiting Scholar she studied under Prof. Marco Frascari and Prof. David Leatherbarrow at University of Pennsylvania in 1995-96.
Since 2004 she has led CINARK – Center for Industrialized Architecture at the RDA and since 2014, she has (co)chaired the graduate program: SET – Settlement, Ecology and Tectonics.
Her research topics are – Ecology in architecture, tectonics, material studies, building culture, theories/ practices of building culture.
Selected books (co)authored: Biobased Materials Tectonics Architecture (2025), Innovation of Nothing (2023), Biogenic Construction: Materials, Architecture & Tectonics (2023), Towards an Ecology of Tectonics (2015), Tectonic Visions in Architecture (2004).
Also, she has led original research that is internationally awarded: Deserta Ecofolie, The Venice Biennale of Architecture 2025 (with Pedro Alonso & Pamela Prado). (Anne Beim et al.), UIA’s Jean Tschumi Prize for Architectural Writing and Critique, 2023, AR Future Projects Awards 2023 – Research & Design Prize. (Anne Beim et al., Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisbon – Research University Award, 2022. (Anne Beim et al.).

Fatiha Polin
Rupgaon: A Paradigm for Climate Resilient Symbiotic Community Development

Fatiha Polin is an architect, researcher, and cultural heritage professional from Bangladesh with over fifteen years of interdisciplinary experience across ecological design, disaster management, community engagement, and heritage conservation. She is the Founder and Executive Director of PERCEIVE, a research-led organization working to understand and reimagine environments through sustainable materials and community-centered design.
Her professional work bridges climate adaptation, emergency preparedness, and sustainable development, particularly in disaster-prone and marginalized contexts. She has led projects on earthen architecture, community development, women empowerment, and emergency response, including preparedness planning for historic urban areas and post-disaster recovery.
Fatiha holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Disaster Management. She has received advanced training from international institutions such as ICCROM, the Getty Conservation Institute, and ICOMOS, and actively contributes to professional and academic networks. Her research and publications explore the links between culture, climate, and the built environment, reflecting a long-term commitment to safeguarding heritage while advancing inclusive and resilient futures.

Salima Naji
Paleoinnovation in Agadir: embodying tomorrow

Elias Khuri
Khan Jaljulia Restoration

Elias Khuri is a Palestinian architect born in 1975 in I‘billin, Galilee. He graduated from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 2005. His project House of the Twelve Olive Trees won first prize at the 2022 Arab Architects Awards, recognized for its ethical approach to preserving ancient olive trees and for exploring memory, continuity, and presence through architecture. He was shortlisted for the 16th Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2023–2025). In 2025, he received the Prix du jury at the Institut du Monde Arabe Design Award for his contribution to design and architecture in the Arab world.
Based in Haifa, Khuri leads a studio working on public and private projects that focus on preserving Palestinian architectural heritage and landscapes. His work engages with Arab and Mediterranean culture, exploring the relationship between space, material, and the senses, and highlighting the beauty of simplicity in vernacular architecture. His projects carry a strong ethical and social dimension, affirming architecture as a cultural act rooted in land and memory. His work has been featured in Domus, Divisare, ArchDaily, and Arquitectura Viva. He is the founder and editor of Tanas, an Arabic platform for architectural criticism.

Buket Ergun
Erased from Within: Interior Loss and the Fiction of Preservation

Dr. Buket Ergun Kocaili is an interior architect and architectural historian. She holds a BFA in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design from Bilkent University, an MSc in Interior Architecture from Cankaya University, and a PhD in Architectural History from Middle East Technical University (METU). Her research focuses on architectural heritage, adaptive reuse, cultural landscapes, and interior-scale approaches to conservation, combining design practice with historical and critical inquiry.
With over 26 years of professional experience, she has worked on residential, public, and large-scale interior projects, while also teaching at various universities as a part-time lecturer for more than a decade.
Her current research includes a TUBİTAK 1001–funded project on the Ankara Tumuli, which reinterprets ancient burial landscapes through nature–culture–human relationships, and the METU BAP project “Actors and Dynamics of Circular Spatial Practices in Turkey: An Analytical Mapping Study,” focusing on adaptive reuse and circular design approaches. Her work critically examines interior transformation, material continuity, and the limits of preservation discourse in modern architectural heritage.

Máximo Bertoia
A Botanic LAB: Rethinking Educational Pedagogy through Productive Infrastructures

Máximo Bertoia (Buenos Aires, 1993) is an architect and founder of BertoiaMax, a studio based between Buenos Aires and Barcelona. His practice engages with both the digital and the physical, treating architectural design and visualization as parallel forms of construction.
Bertoia holds a degree from FADU-UBA, where he also pursued a Master’s in History and Criticism of Architecture and served as Professor. His work combines professional practice with academic experience, developing projects that range from virtual imagery to built reality.

Camilo Restrepo
Farallones Coffee wet mill

AGENdA Agencia de Arquitectura is Co-founded by Camilo Restrepo Ochoa and Juliana Gallego Martinez in Medellin, Colombia. From within tropical climatic and territorial conditions, the studio understands architecture as a cultural practice that operates as infrastructure, organizing material, environmental, and social relations across scales, positioning the project between disciplinary reasoning and contextual negotiation..

Alejandro Guerrero
Bottling warehouse and offices for a Tequila company

Alejandro Guerrero and Andrea Soto graduated from ITESO and have been working together since 2010. Alejandro Guerrero completed a master degree at ETSAB/UPC. Andrea Soto completed a Master’s in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard GSD. They have received the Emerging Voices award from The Architectural League of New York. Their work has been nominated twice for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. They have been winners at XIII BIAU in 2024 with the Center for Culture and the Arts of the Ribera. In 2023, they received a silver recognition at the Erich Mendelsson Preis in Berlin, and in 2024, they were finalists in the Brick Award in Vienna, both with the project Center for Culture and the Arts of the Ribera. In 2024, his work Bottling Warehouse and Offices for a Tequila Company was selected for the 2024 Oscar Niemeyer Prize and is finalist at the Brick Award in Vienna 2026. They have been lecturers at Harvard GSD, the Dallas Architecture Forum and at The University of Virginia UVA School of Architecture where they were named Harry Shure Visiting Professors of Practice in Architecture.

Armida Fernández
Rethinking Industial Environments: Integrating Culture, Tradition, and Sustainability

Estudio ALA is an interdisciplinary architectural practice based in GDL, Mex. in 2012. Founded by partners Armida Fernandez and Luis Enrique Flores. Flores graduated from UDG (Universidad de GDL), with a Master´s degree in Landscape Architecture (MLA I AP) at Harvard GSD. And Fernandez graduated from Tec de Monterrey. She did a Master of Design Studies in the concentration of Risk and Resilience (MDES R&R) at the GSD at Harvard University.
They have been adjunct professors in the Department of Architecture at Wentworth IT in Boston, USA. Currently, Fernández teaches at Tec de Monterrey, and Flores teaches at UDG. They have lectured and served as critics at various universities, including Harvard GSD (USA), MIT, Architectural League of NY, IIT-Chicago, University of Colorado, CCA San Francisco, Veritas University (Costa Rica), National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), among others.
Their work has been nominated by the Illinois Institute of Technology for the Mies Crown Hall Architectural Prize MCHAP emerge 2016 and 2022. They were one of the firms selected to participate in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale within the Mexico Pavilion, among others. Recently, they were selected by the Architectural League of New York as Emerging Voices 2024.

CO53 (Sharona Cramer & Yotam Oron)
Now That the Neighborhood Is Nice, Why Do I Have to Move?

CO53 is a NYC–based practice working across architectural scales alongside research on housing affordability, collective land ownership, and alternative development models. Founded by Sharona Cramer and Yotam Oron following their joint thesis at the Yale School of Architecture, which received the Independent Design Research Award.

Sharona Cramer is an architect and designer based in NYC. She holds a post-professional M.Arch from Yale and a B.Arch with honors from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, where she graduated first in her class and received the Azrieli Foundation Prize. She has previously practiced in TLV, leading residential and public projects, and has held teaching roles at Yale and Bezalel, as well as serving as a founding team member and studio tutor at the Negev School of Architecture.

Yotam Oron is an architect and urbanist based in NYC and currently a Princeton | CAC Fellow. He holds a post-professional M.Arch from Yale and a B.Arch with honors from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, where he received the Azrieli Foundation Prize and the Joseph Vaada Bolafio Prize for excellence in architectural theory. He has previously practiced in TLV leading housing and educational projects, and held research collaborations (UNESCO) and teaching roles at Yale and Bezalel.

Sadichchha Shrestha
Reviving local games, Reclaiming Public Spaces: Let’s Play Initiative Nepal.

Huinan Zhang
Spatial Interdependence: Hollowed Villages Becoming Sustainable Communities.

Huinan Zhang is a doctoral candidate in the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, where she also earned her PhD under the supervision of Professor Jun Shan. Her research focuses on the spatial evolution and contemporary reconstruction of traditional villages, specifically developing quantitative analysis paths for social spaces through the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Social Network Analysis (SNA).
With a prolific academic record, she has published 10 papers, including high-impact articles in Frontiers of Architectural Research and Land.An active participant in international exchange, Huinan has conducted field research in Nairobi and presented findings across Asia and Europe. She combines her strong background in architectural design with advanced skills in Python-based data modeling and machine learning.

María Isabel Paz Suaréz
Quito Fragmented

María Isabel Paz Suárez (Marisa Paz) is an Ecuadorian architect and professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). She holds a Master of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design (2013) and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Virginia (2008). Her research focuses on the intersection of design, biodiversity, and cultural heritage preservation in Ecuador, with a particular emphasis on endangered craft traditions. At USFQ, she has strengthened architectural education by integrating creative methods of representation, from cyanotypes and textile weaving patterns to speculative drawings that envision Quito’s future growth. Her work combines academic research with community engagement, documenting oral histories and developing inclusive strategies for the safeguarding of intangible heritage. She has collaborated internationally with Yale, UT Austin, and RISD, bringing sustainable design perspectives to the Galápagos Islands and the Andean cloud forest. Marisa is also founder of Materia Arquitectura, a boutique practice dedicated to innovative, context-driven design.

Kathrin Golda-Pongratz
City Unfinished – Voices of El Ermitaño

Kathrin Golda-Pongratz is a Professor at the Urbanism Department at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and Vice-Dean of the School of Architecture of El Vallès (ETSAV). She holds a PhD from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT. As member of the Laboratori d’Urbanisme de Barcelona (LUB), she publishes and lectures internationally. Her research focuses on urban memory, urban culture and public space, pre-Hispanic heritage, non-formal housing, urbanism and place-making strategies. Her book (with J.L. Oyón and V. Zimmermann) “John F C Turner. Autoconstrucción. Por una autonomía del habitar” was distinguished with the “FAD Award on Thought and Criticism” in 2019. In 2018, she presented her documentary “City Unfinished – Voices of El Ermitaño” which was shown at the Lima Film Festival (2019), the Urban October Habitat Norway (2019), the Arquitectura Film Festival in Santiago de Chile (2020) and the World Urban Forum (WUF12) in Cairo (2024). Her experience expands into curating and cultural transmission. She is a board member of the FAD, of the sounding board of the Research Center for New Social Housing at TU Vienna, the German Association of Latin American Research (ADLAF), and elected member of the German Academy of Urban and Regional Planning (DASL) and Academia Europaea (AE).

Solam Mkhabela
The Twilight Zone

Solam Mkhabela is an urban designer based at the School of Architecture and Planning (SoAP) at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg. He holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS) and a Master of City Planning and Urban Design (MCPUD) from UCT, Cape Town, and a Ph.D. from WITS. He is currently an International Fellow of the Urban Studies Foundation (USF) at Edinburgh University to transform his doctoral thesis, Urban Scripting: Audio-visual Forms of Storytelling in Urban Design and Planning: The Case of Two Activity Streets in Johannesburg (2023), into a manuscript for publication titled The Urban Scripting Ways: Shifting the Frame to the ‘Other.

Solam’s work promotes transdisciplinary methods using audio-visual storytelling to read complex urban situations. It positions the urban designer in African cities as a producer of physical space in conjunction with social content from, for, and with society’s margins, thereby restructuring spatial practice for more equitable life.

Solam authored the graphic novel, Alexandra: A Backstory (Jacana Media, 2024). This hybrid work, which merges academic writing with the graphic novel format, garnered considerable attention in South African media, underscoring the importance of the discourse it engages with.

Isabella De Bonis
Floating Manaus: Riverine Legacies and the Urban Utopia

I am an Amazonian woman dedicated to research and creative practice in architecture, territory, and urban history. I hold a degree in Architecture and Urbanism from Escola da Cidade and a Master’s degree in Habitat from the University of São Paulo. I am currently a PhD candidate in History and Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo, with funding from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), developing the research Deconstructing the Myth of the Amazonian Void: The Floating City in Historical and Territorial Perspective.
My work focuses on riverine forms of urbanization, informal and non-institutional urbanisms, and Amazonian and Brazilian agencies in city-making processes. I run Iapó Estúdio and co-create Lab Igarité, a research laboratory dedicated to architecture, territory, and Amazonian imaginaries. I have teaching experience at the Federal University of Amazonas and Faculdade Martha Falcão Wyden, and I am a member of the research groups Culture, Architecture and City in Latin America (CACAL) and Modern Architecture in the Amazon Research Group (NAMA).

Chiara Oggioni and Yi Sun
One Floor / One-Woman : Spatial Implications of Women’s Labour. “Wo-Men Work”

Wo-Men Work is a critical spatial practice co-founded by Chiara Oggioni and Sun Yi. Through filmmaking, they
investigate how socio-political issues—particularly those surrounding women’s labour—are spatially produced and
experienced. Their work has been exhibited internationally at INDA and Bangkok Design Week (2026), the UABB
Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (2025), MIT Keller Gallery (2024), Escola da Cidade, São Paulo
(2024), and PMQ, Hong Kong (2022)

Víctor Cano-Ciborro
Counter-Cartographies of Migrants to the Canary Islands

Víctor Cano-Ciborro is an architect currently teaching at Universidad Europea de Canarias (Spain) and Universidad de las Américas (Ecuador). He holds a Ph.D. in Architecture (“summa cum laude” and Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award 2020–2021) from ETSAM, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He was a predoctoral visiting researcher at UC Berkeley, a postdoctoral researcher at The New School (New York) and UPM, and a Marie Curie Fellow at Brown University. He has also taught at ETSAM, the Architectural Association, and CEPT University (India). His research develops counter-cartographies that reveal architectures of resistance in contested territories through the subaltern bodies that inhabit and build them. His work has been published in Cities, Environment and Planning B, INVI, EGA, and ARQ, and exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016, 2018) and the 20th Chilean Architecture and Urbanism Biennale (2017). He is co-author of “Rebel Bodies Rebel Cities” (CEPT Press, 2022) and Principal Investigator of “Counter-Cartographies of Migrants to the Canary Islands,” funded by La Caixa Social Research.

Ilaria Iacconi Iambrenghi
Intersectional Urbanism: building cities of justice and climate resilience

Ilaria Iacconi Iambrenghi (b. 1994) works at the intersection of architecture, communication, and urban sociological studies, examining how space produces power relations, inequalities, and forms of belonging.

Aga Kuś
Spaces of Knowing: Co-creating Embedded Architectural Research Through Everyday Encounters

Cristiane Muniz and Fernando Viegas, Bárbara Francelin and Thiago Augusto Zati. Escola da Cidade
Diadema Educational Block

Escola da Cidade, an Architecture and Urbanism Association [1996], a non-profit civil organization with democratic governance and financial autonomy. It occupies old modern buildings [São Paulo], abandoned in the late 1990’s, an affirmative action to transform the area.
Fernando Viegas and Cristiane Muniz are the coordinators of Diadema Educational Block, arch., professors, founding partners of UNA MUNIZVIEGAS and UNA arquitetos, with the collaboration of Thiago Zati and Bárbara Francelin, arch., researchers and assistant professors.

Diego Ricalde
The City of Indigenous Arts

Diego Ricalde Recchia (Mexico) studied Architecture at UNAM and earned an M.Arch & Urbanism AA DRL in London. He has received awards including Young Creators, FONCA, and the Marcelo Zambrano Scholarship (CEMEX). Since 2010, he has taught at UNAM and Universidad Iberoamericana. In 2010 he co-founded Estudio MMX in Mexico City with Jorge Arvizu, Ignacio del Río, and Emmanuel Ramírez. The practice has received the Young Architects Award (NY), Design Vanguard, BAL Prize, Cemex Awards, and Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York, and has been widely published internationally.

César Vivas
Shelter for Homeless Women: Architecture Serving Social Reintegration

César Vivas Millaruelo (Barcelona, 1975) se licenció en la ETSAB, Escuela Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona, en 2002. También estudió en la Universität Hannover, Architektur & Landschaftarchitektur, en Alemania. Ha colaborado en diversos despachos de arquitectura y paisajismo en Berlín y Barcelona antes de desarrollar su propio trabajo como Vivas Arquitectos.

El estudio Vivas Arquitectos, fundado por César Vivas y Cristian Vivas en Barcelona en 2006, abarca desde la conceptualización hasta la ejecución de proyectos en colaboración con técnicos y consultores especializados. En los últimos años ha desarrollado diversas líneas de especialización mediante una aproximación basada en la investigación, con el objetivo de dar respuesta a cada situación garantizando la sostenibilidad económica, social y medioambiental. El uso de sistemas industrializados y proyectos modulares y ordenados caracteriza sus trabajos más recientes.

Del mismo modo, su obra destaca por un cuidado trabajo del vacío a través de espacios comunitarios entendidos como áreas intermedias entre lo público y lo privado. Esto permite proyectar lugares de socialización flexibles que superan lo estrictamente requerido por los programas y se adaptan a las necesidades y momentos vitales de sus habitantes.

Léa Namer
The inmortal, a reflexion on the Sexto Panteon legacy

Léa Namer (b. 1989) is a French architect and researcher. In 2019, she initiated Chacarita Moderna, a research project on the Sexto Panteón of Buenos Aires’ Chacarita Cemetery. The study of this unique necropolis marked the beginning of a multidisciplinary artistic practice (photo, video, installation) and a broader reflection on how contemporary societies relate to death and cemeteries. Her book Chacarita Moderna: The Brutalist Necropolis of Buenos Aires was published in 2024 by Building Books, with the support of the Graham Foundation.

Valentina Labriola
Designing Otherwise: Architecture Beyond the Human

Valentina Labriola is a landscape architect and PhD candidate in Architecture. History and Project at Politecnico di Torino. Her research is supported by a joint scholarship with Tsinghua University in Beijing, as part of the Transnational Architectural Models in a Globalized World program. She is a member of China Room, an interdisciplinary research group at the Politecnico di Torino that explores the transformations of contemporary Chinese cities and territories through architecture, urbanism, and policy analysis. During her academic journey, Valentina has collaborated with institutions across Europe, China, the US, and Canada.

Her work focuses on how speculative narratives—ranging from fiction literature and film to digital media—contribute to shaping architectural and climate imaginaries. With an interdisciplinary approach, she combines architectural design, media theory, and urban studies to explore how future cities are imagined, represented, and communicated. Her research also engages with visual culture, exhibition practice, and more-than-human design, addressing the role of imagination in shaping spatial and ecological futures.

Jose Maria Torres Nadal
The ecology will come and welcome you in it’s bosom

José María Torres Nadal, ( Murcia 1947), doctorado por la ETSA de Barcelona, (1973); profesor ETSAB 1978-1997; catedrático de Arquitectura en la Universidad de Alicante 1997-2017. Ha sido profesor invitado en diversas Universidades americanas y europeas y actualmente es colaborador honorifico distintas escuelas de arquitectura de Latinoamérica. Su obra “Auditorio en La Vila Joiosa” fue seleccionada para la exposición “On Site: New Spanish Architecture” en el M.O.M.A. de Nueva York (2006). El resto de su actividad profesional ha sido publicada en el libro Arquitecturas TorresNadal: un trabajo Editorial Rueda 2008, con prólogo de Robert Venturi, y textos de Toyo Ito y Enric Miralles. Su actividad teórica y académica en Alicante está recogida en el libro ARQUITECTURA IN-DEPENDIENTE, ( U. de Alicante 2019) con prólogo de Andres Jaque. Actualmente investiga la ecologización de la arquitectura, confort ecológico y la Cultura de la Tierra, textos recogidos en el libro EXPERIMENTOS ECOLOGICOS IMPUROS fuera/dentro de la ECOLOGIA. Premio C.O.A.MU a la trayectoria profesional 2025.

Michel Kessler
Under the Ice

Speaker: Michel Kessler is an architect, filmmaker, and author. In 2022, he founded the architecture and research practice michel.kessler+associates, which investigates the infrastructural, material, and medial conditions of contemporary spatial production. His work has been exhibited, among others, at the Biennale di Venezia, Sonic Matter, and the GTA Exhibitions at ETH Zurich; his writings have appeared in ARCH+, e-flux, and Arab Urbanism. In 2024, he received the Foundation Award for Innovation in Architecture; in 2022, the City of Zurich’s Werkjahr Literatur for his poetry; and in 2011, the Matheton Agon from the University of Basel. In 2017, he participated in the Theater Winkelwiese’s Dramenprozessor with the play “Pentheus”. His short film “Under the Ice” (co-directed with David Oesch) has received multiple international awards, including the Méliès d’Argent for Best European Short Film at Grimmfest (UK).

Marcos Zegers
The Mineral Landscape Has a Light Blue Sky

Architect and documentary and architectural photographer. His work explores transformations of territory and ways of inhabiting in Latin America. He is a National Geographic Society Explorer (2024–2026) and a contributor to The New York Times. Winner of POY Latam and selected by World Press Photo (6×6 and Joop Swart). His work has been exhibited and published internationally.

Blanca Pujals.
Designing with Rare Earths: Unveiling Material Geopolitics

Architect, spatial researcher and filmmaker. Her practice addresses the political and material dimensions of contemporary techno-scientific infrastructures and the geopolitics of materials.
Architect from ETSAB-UPC; MA in Critical Theory from the Independent Studies Programme of MACBA; MA from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. PhD in Philosophy, Visual and Material Cultures.
Her work, publications, teaching and lectures have been presented internationally.

Constanza Ipinza
Lithium Extraction and Ecological Resistance in the Andean Altiplano

Chilean architect, PhD in Architecture and Urbanism, and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH). Her practice and research explore the intersection of architectural design, sound studies, and well-being in built environments. Through a posthumanist lens, her recent work engages with the relationships between ecology, technology and architecture through teaching and research-based design practices.

Elspeth Mary Lee
Re-Sourcing: Design, Extraction, and Infrastructural Legacies in Western Australia

Elspeth Lee is an architect, educator, and writer, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong. Her work focuses on the often-concealed systems of architectural production, maintenance, and temporality, questioning how buildings are made, by whom, and under what social, cultural, and environmental conditions. Through practice, teaching, and research, she challenges standardisation, extractive construction cultures, and short-term thinking, advocating for forms of architectural practice that engage directly with material realities, labour, and long-term responsibility, and that position making as a cultural and collective act.

Lee is also co-founder of Superposition, an experimental architecture studio operating between Hong Kong and Ireland. Founded together with Donn Holohan, the practice integrates research, teaching, and built work, developing context-specific architectures shaped by local materials, labour practices, and evolving traditions of making. Superposition’s work has been widely exhibited and recognised internationally, and has received numerous awards and commendations for its research-led and material-focused approach to architecture.

.

Ana Laura Bertero
Subterranean Resonances: The memory of the Air-Raid Shelters in Barcelona

Ana Laura Bertero Mastrangelo is an architect and researcher based in Spain. She graduated in Architecture from the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB–Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and is currently a PhD candidate in Theory and History of Architecture at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Her doctoral research focuses on the air-raid shelters of Barcelona, understood as underground architectures of collective protection and as historically marginalised components of the urban fabric.

Her work examines the relationship between subterranean space, vulnerability, and memory, situating these infrastructures within broader debates on conflict-related heritage and the transmission of traumatic pasts. This research trajectory began during her Master’s Degree in Architecture, where she specialised in Theory, History and Culture and in Architectural Restoration and Rehabilitation.

Alongside her academic research, she develops professional practice in architectural restoration and heritage conservation, which informs her critical approach to preservation and adaptive reuse. She has presented her research at international conferences and seminars focused on architecture, memory, and conflict heritage.

Nadia Habash
Architecture as Ethical Resistance to Colonial and Capitalist Violence

Nadia Habash is a Palestinian architect, urban designer, and heritage preservation expert. Founder of Habash Consulting Engineers and adjunct professor at Birzeit University, she advances sustainable development and community resilience. An award-winning architect and the first woman to preside over the Engineers Association in Palestine, she views architecture as a dialectical force that both reflects and reshapes society, and as a vital instrument of resistance in contexts of oppression.

Damien Greder
Humanitarian Imaginary

Damien is a PhD candidate in the International Relations & Political Science department and a Doctoral Researcher for the Future of Humanitarian Design (HUD) at The Geneva School of Art and Design HEAD – Genève (HES-SO). He founded Hypothesis atelier to focus on social architecture, and data-room.xyz to explore connections between material and digital spaces. Damien holds a Msc in Architecture from the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and a Bsc from the Academy of Architecture of Mendrisio.

Yevheniia Berchul
Weaponization of Water: Hydrological Infrastructure as Battlefield in Black Sea

Yevheniia Berchul is an architect, urban designer, and researcher based in Berlin. She is a Research Associate at SpACE Lab (Spatial Analytics and Crossdisciplinary Experimentation Lab) and a PhD candidate at the ISU—Institute for Sustainable Urbanism, Technische Universität Braunschweig, directed by Vanessa Miriam Carlow. Her research explores how occupation and the militarisation of landscapes shape urban planning as a tool of territorial control in conflict contexts..

Matias del Campo
Becoming Cybersyn Architecture and the Reassembly of Systemic Intelligence

Dr. Matias del Campo is an architect and theorist whose work positions AI as a cultural technique that reconfigures how design disciplines produce and reason about form. His research foregrounds prediction, optimization, and inference as sites of architectural interrogation. Co-founder of SPAN and AKI (Angewandte Künstliche Intelligenz), Vienna. Author of Neural Architecture (2022) and Diffusions in Architecture (2024). Collections: MAK Vienna, MAXXI Rome, Albertina, FRAC Centre.

Vanessa Ma
Rethinking Competitions as Visibility Systems in the Digital Age

Speaker: Vanessa Ma is an architect, researcher and curator working between Hong Kong and the UK. Her practice examines how architectural knowledge is represented, circulated and valued beyond built form through exhibitions, publications and research-led initiatives. She specialises in structuring research and creative output into public programmes and cross-disciplinary projects that extend the lifecycle of spatial ideas. In 2020, she co-founded Project: As If ___ with Leroy Cheng to explore authorship, visibility and the circulation of architectural work.

Álvaro Andueza
The Cloud is burning! Cloud architecture in the spanish context

Architect, graduated from the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM). His research focuses on revealing the often-invisible spatial, material, and infrastructural systems that sustain everyday life. In 2024, he completed his Bachelor’s Final Project, “From Cloud to Brick: Data Architecture in the Spanish Context,” receiving an Outstanding grade. He later obtained his Master’s degree in Architecture in 2025. In the first semester of 2026, he will undertake a research stay at Diego Portales University in Santiago de Chile, funded by the Government of Navarre, where he will further investigate the physical infrastructure that supports the internet.

Claudia Orsetti
Datapolis+:The Materiality of Data

Claudia Orsetti, together with Caterina Micucci, is the co-founder of Atelier Atollo, a studio working across architecture, curation and exhibition design. She obtained her master inArchitecture from the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio in 2010 with Valerio Olgiati.
Before starting her own practice, she previously worked for Cino Zucchi, SANAA, and Heatherwick Studio. She has been teaching at Politecnico di Milano and she currently teaches at NABA, Nuova Accademia Belle Arti.

Anne Gross
The Systemic Making of Space: Lucius Burckhardt’s Architecture of Perception

Anne Gross is the co-founder of Studio GROSS, an experimental spatial practice based in Tokyo that views architecture as a discipline of euphoria. Through curation and filmmaking, they broaden their planning scope and aim to share insights into the building industry. In addition to collaborations with institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Swiss Architectural Museum in Basel, film also serves as a means of project documentation.
Originally from Berlin, Anne and her partner trained as generalists through a traveling European master’s program in architecture. After several years of work, they felt the profession needed to step out of its comfort zone to achieve greater self-efficacy. Consequently, they left Berlin and, a few years later, established Studio GROSS as an experimental exhibition space, which evolved into an office focused on neighborhood projects in Tokyo. Their work concentrates on renovation work in response to the rising vacancy rate in the Japanese capital and advocates for existing buildings as valuable resources.
Anne’s research at the Institute of Science, Tokyo, grounds her practice within a theoretical framework that explores the socioeconomic principles of urban systems through walking.

Luca Quagliato
Antropia

Luca Quagliato is a freelance filmmaker and photographer based in Milan. Since 2014 his work has focused on environmental and social issues, with a particular interest in geography, industrial territories and landscape.

His photographic reportage has been published internationally by Libération, Domus, The Washington Post, la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, IRPI Media, and Elle Decor Italia.
He is the co-author of the photo-journalistic book La Terra di Sotto, an in-depth investigation into environmental pollution and industrial contamination across northern Italy.

As a filmmaker he directed and co-directed documentary and experimental works, including Life Is a Game (2023), a film on food-delivery workers and platform labor, and Antropia (2018). His films have been screened at major national and international festivals such as Visioni dal Mondo, Internazionale a Ferrara, Job Film Days, Working Title Film Festival, and the Lugano Human Rights Film Festival.

Aleksandra Redzisz
Supra-grounds

Aleksandra Redzisz is a Warsaw-based architect. She studied architecture at the Glasgow School of Art and earned a Master of Science in Architecture from the Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio. She has been a senior designer at Sou Fujimoto Architects Tokyo since 2023 and concurrently develops her own practice. Her work has been exhibited at the New Narratives in Architecture Conference in Warsaw (2025) and at the In:dependance Furka Pass residency in Switzerland (2023).

Simone Marcolin
Watching the Grass Grow: Field Notes

I am an Italian photographer based in Barcelona. My practice focuses mainly on the observation and representation of spaces and objects. I am interested in the processes underlying image-making, and in the subtle—often mysterious—balance that allows certain images to resonate while others do not. In particular, I am interested in how a sense of space can be communicated through the flat plane of the image. I usually work through a serial approach, often in a non-linear and non-narrative way, juxtaposing heterogeneous images according to their visual and intuitive affinities. I collaborate with different architecture studios and institutions across Europe, and my work has been published in the context of monographs, collective publications, exhibitions, and magazines.

Pol Esteve Castelló
Discoteca de playa: mobilizing desire to reimagine the coast

Natalia Figueredo
Tuned Territories: Water, Resistance and Decolonial Architecture

I am a Latino-Amazonian woman from Belém (northern Brazil), currently based in Barcelona (Spain).

As an architect, urbanist, and cultural theorist, I have chosen not to build, but to engage deeply in research and communication — through artistic practice, sound experimentation, writing, lecturing, and contributing to critical urban thought. I work at the intersection of urbanism, cultural studies, and urban anthropology, connecting my Amazonian roots with global dialogues. My work focuses on critical ecologies, decolonial thought, and feminisms to challenge dominant ideas of territory, knowledge, and power.

Through my PhD, I research the materialization of the built environment in urban Amazonia and its interaction with unique sociabilities. Moreover, as a fellow researcher at Sonic Street Technology, I examine how cultural expressions—particularly music—shape and reflect social dynamics in the Global South.

Sometimes I perform as DJ, using sound as a way to connect and celebrate.

Francisco Felipo Muñoz
(A)esthetics of the Everyday: Environmental Poetics in Social Architecture

Architect (Madrid, 1968), graduated from ETSAM (1995) and PhD from UPM-ETSAM (2016). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Architectural Composition, supervising Bachelor’s and Master’s Final Projects (TFG–TFM) and teaching in the MUPAAC programme at the School of Architecture of the University of Alcalá (UAH), where he also serves as Secretary of the Department of Architecture. He is a member of the ARHCIPAI and Eco-Futuring research groups at UAH, the latter a design laboratory for the green city, and was a member of the GIGAC research group at ETSAM-UPM until 2017. He is currently an active member of the PHS-MARCO Project (2024/PH-HUM-290 MARCO-CM). Professionally, he is a founding partner of the studio-workshop TRAZA ARQUITECTURA AMBIENTAL and the author of numerous social and subsidized housing projects (over 1,000 dwellings built) as well as public facilities, some resulting from competition wins. His research focuses on an Aesthetics of the Common (ECO), understood as an environmental poetics of dwelling grounded in everyday experience, material frugality, and collective processes, developed through scientific articles and conference papers.

Jose Lorenzo Belandres
Obscure Niches: Mapping Urban Becoming in Metro Manila’s Interstices

Ar. Enzo P. Belandres is an architect, educator, and researcher based in the Philippines. He is a full-time faculty member at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, where he teaches architectural design studios and research methodology, with a focus on systems-driven thinking, operative mapping, and design as an instrument for spatial and social transition.

He is the managing partner of Pluszerotwo Architecture, a practice that approaches architecture as an adaptive system rather than a static object, emphasizing interstitial spaces, design from scarcity, and research-led spatial strategies grounded in the Global South context. His work spans residential projects, speculative research, and academic–practice hybrids, and has been recognized in international platforms, including the World Architecture Festival.

Belandres completed his Master’s degree in Integrated Architectural Design in Barcelona, where his research explored mapping methodologies as tools for architectural inquiry and intervention. His current work investigates how architectural systems can act as agents of transition amid environmental, social, and territorial change.

Ella Fleri Soler and Andrew Darmanin (Text Catalogue)
Documenting Difference

Ella Fleri Soler is a Maltese architect at the intersection of architecture, art and design pedagogy. She maintains an independent practice and co-founded Text Catalogue, a collective producing installations, critical writing and workshops engaging spatial, cultural and political conditions, with work shown in Malta and Berlin. She is a visiting lecturer at the University of Malta and Chair of Design at MEIA. In 2026, she was selected for the Art Omi: Architecture residency in Ghent, New York.

Andrew Darmanin is a Maltese architect and Senior Architect at DTR, a multidisciplinary practice integrating design and engineering where he delivers award-winning built works across scales in Malta. He co-founded Text Catalogue, a collective producing installations, critical writing and workshops engaging spatial, cultural and political conditions, with work shown in Malta and Berlin. He is a casual lecturer at the University of Malta’s Faculty for the Built Environment.

Nipun Prabhakar
Kutch’s Living Birdhouses: Community Sanctuaries for Coexistence

Nipun Prabhakar is an architect and photographer based in India, whose work explores the poetics and politics of the quotidian. He works at the intersection of folklore, material culture, and the built environment. His background in architecture grounds his visual practice, allowing him to document spaces with a sensitivity to both culture and geography.

In 2023, he was invited to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to present his work at their inaugural Architecture Photography Festival. Nipun’s work has been featured by the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Wallpaper*. He has collaborated on research with MIT, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, and the Institute of Development Studies. He is a former Cornell South Asian Fellow (2019-20) and a recipient of the Berkeley Essay Prize (2014).
Nipun is also the founder of Dhammada Collective, an interdisciplinary practice focused on community architecture, participatory design, and vernacular construction. The collective was recently awarded the 2025 Ammodo Architecture Award for Local Scale and the ID Honours in Vernacular Design.

Atienza Maure
Nave. Rehabilitation of an old industrial warehouse

Atienza Maure is an architecture studio based in Madrid and Barcelona, founded in 2018 by Alonso Atienza and Miguel Ángel Maure, following theis studies at ETSAM and EPFL. Their work examines space and construction through a pragmatic yet hedonistic approach grounded in local context. From this perspective, they understand the vernacular as a contemporary interpretation of the available, shaped by materials, techniques, and means at hand.

Connor Gravelle
Land, Labor and Civic Ecology

Connor Gravelle is an architect and researcher whose work examines the material, social, and ecological entanglements of architecture with its contexts. His design work focuses on the building as a site of profound contingency, where disciplinary abstraction meets physical reality. In their construction and afterlives, Connor argues, buildings bind architecture to questions of climate and equity at a moment of both historic challenge and opportunity.

Trung Mai
The Grid

Trung Mai, founder of Hanoi ad hoc / Ad hoc Practice, is a Vietnamese-born French architect, urban planner, and architectural curator whose works have been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale , the 19th International Exhibition — Intelli(gens), curated by Carlo Ratti, and in the French Pavilion Living With. He is also a three-time winner of the Europan competition (15, 16, 17) in Spain, Italy, and France.
Trung’s work explores urban renewal in post-industrial contexts, integrating ecological systems, urban agriculture, and the presence of non-human actors into the city, while examining critical regionalism, resilience, reversibility, and architectural rearrangement in the context of the Anthropocene. His research and design interests focus on the adaptive and ad hoc nature of urban environments, which he identifies as the core DNA of Vietnamese spatial practice and a mode of decolonizing through lived spatial interventions, as well as a model for the future of spatial practice.
Trung has been a guest lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Chulalongkorn University,École Spéciale d’Architecture, ENSA Paris-Belleville, and currently at ENSA Versailles and Invited External Advisor, Master of Architecture Thesis, Yale University.