Season One (2020–2021) Speakers
Photo by @heidisbridge
Alyse Archer-Coité
Alyse Archer-Coité has focused her career in art, industrial design and publishing. She began at Sotheby’s, moving to Philips de Pury when she also launched her own arts magazine, MAKER. Alyse went on to create print publications for Neuehouse and Yabu Pushelberg and then moved to Berlin as managing editor for Freunde von Freunden, a design and architecture interview platform. She returned to NYC in 2015 to create the global cultural program for the A/D/O, a BMW MINI Global initiative, where she expanded its global community, and worked with a diverse group of partners. In 2018, Alyse was recruited by Apple where she is currently leading research & special projects for Apple’s Industrial Design team.
Sunil Bald
Sunil Bald is Professor of Architecture, and Associate Dean at Yale, where he oversees curriculum and admissions for the M Arch I and M Arch II programs. He is also an architect and founding partner of studioSUMO in Long Island City, New York.
studioSUMO.com
Germane Barnes
Germane Barnes’s research and design practice examine how the built environment influences black domesticity. His design and research contributions have been exhibited in several international institutions, most notably, The Museum of Modern Art and The Graham Foundation, and published in The New York Times and Metropolis Magazine. Barnes is a recipient of the 2021–22 Rome Prize. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami.
GermaneBarnes.com
Photo by Henrietta Williams
Shumi Bose
Shumi Bose is a lecturer, curator, and editor based in London, UK. She teaches at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, and has worked as curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects and for the Venice Biennale.
Sean Canty
Sean Canty is the Founder of Studio Sean Canty, a design practice interested in creating spaces that activate perception. He is also one of the founding principals of Office III, an experimental architectural collective that spans New York, San Francisco and Cambridge. Selected as a finalist for the 2016 MoMA PS1 Young Architects competition, OIII has completed a Welcome Center for Governors Island and exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sean is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
SeanCanty.net
Photo by Frances Denny
Tei Carpenter
Tei Carpenter is founder and director of Agency—Agency, a New York City and Toronto based studio engaging design at a variety of scales including buildings, infrastructures and environments. She teaches at the University of Toronto. Tei’s studio has been selected as a 2018 AIA New Practices New York, a Next Progressives by Architect Magazine, and her work was recently featured in PIN-UP, Cultured, and included in Domus’ list of 100 Best Architecture Firms.
Agency-Agency.us
Esther M. Choi
Esther M .Choi is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist and scholar based in New York City, and the creator of Office Hours (2020–). She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at The Cooper Union and was previously a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art. Choi is the creator of the James Beard nominated artist’s cookbook Le Corbuffet (Prestel, 2019) and co-editor of Architecture Is All Over (Columbia U, 2017) and Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (MIT Press, 2010). Her work as an artist and public scholar has been featured in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, 032C, PIN-UP, New York Magazine, Vogue, Architectural Digest and more. Choi’s photographic commissions have appeared in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Elle Decor, Dazed and Confused, AnOther Man and The New York Times Magazine.
EstherChoi.net
Mark L. Gardner
Mark L. Gardner AIA, NOMA is a Principal at Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects. Mark has led many of Jaklitsch / Gardner’s design initiatives and works to best understand the role of design as a social practice. He is the Director of the M.Arch. Program and Assistant Professor of Architectural Practice and Society at the School of the Constructed Environments, Parsons the New School.
JaklitschGardner.com
Eric Hu
Eric Hu is a creative director and designer based in New York City, working with clients in the field of fashion, music, architecture and technology. Previously Eric was Global Design Director at Nike Sportswear and the Director of Design at SSENSE where he formed its inaugural design team.
EricHu.info
Jonathan Jackson
Jonathan Jackson is partner of WeShouldDoItAll (WSDIA), a design studio that translates clients’ needs into dynamic, visual systems that can be presented at multiple scales. These solutions take the form of branding, interactive, books, environmental or spatial projects.
WSDIA.com
Lee Mun Wah
Lee Mun Wah is an internationally renowned Chinese American documentary filmmaker, author, educator, community therapist, and master diversity trainer. He is the Executive Director of StirFry Seminars & Consulting, a diversity training company that provides educational tools and workshops on cross-cultural communication and awareness, mindful facilitation, and conflict mediation techniques. The Color of Fear, his documentary film about the state of race relations in the US, was featured in a one-hour special by Oprah Winfrey. His latest film, If These Halls Could Talk, focuses on college students and their experiences with racism and other diversity issues in higher education.
StirFrySeminars.com
Photo by Dario Calmese
Justin Garrett Moore
Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist. Justin is the Inaugural Program Officer for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Effort to Bring More Voices into Public Spaces and the former Executive Director of the New York City Public Design Commission. He has extensive design and planning experience—from large-scale urban systems, policies and projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design and arts initiatives.
Quilian Riano
Quilian Riano is the Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture. Quilian is also the founder and lead designer of DSGN AGNC, a design studio exploring new forms of political engagement and co-creation through architecture, urbanism, landscapes and art. Quilian/DSGN AGNC’s design work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Queens Museum of Art, Harvard University, The Storefront for Art and Architecture and The New Museum, among others.
DSGNAGNC.com
Jacqueline Shaw
Jacqueline Shaw is a designer and Assistant Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate design studios. Prior to founding her own practice, she has ten years of professional experience in New York and Detroit as an Associate at SPAN Architecture and practiced at Jaklitsch/Gardner, readymade by Stephen Burks and M1DTW.
Asad Syrkett
Asad Syrkett is a design editor and writer based in Brooklyn. He is the Editor in Chief of Elle Decor. Asad has been on staff at Curbed, Architectural Digest and Architectural Record, and previously co-hosted a weekly design podcast.
AsadSyrkett.com
Lexi Tsien-Shiang
Lexi Tsien-Shiang is a principal of Soft-Firm, a New York-based practice and platform for ideas, images, exhibitions and buildings. She has taught at Yale, Parsons, RISD, Cooper Union, and is currently an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP.
Soft-Firm.com
Dong-Ping Wong
Dong is the Founding Director of Food New York, co-founder of Friends of + POOL, and was a founding partner of Family New York with Oana Stănescu. Dong's work has been featured in publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, PIN-UP, Fast Company, the Economist and Wired. He was awarded the Diamond Award for Engineering Excellence, the New York Design Award for Best Young Practice and was nominated for the INDEX Awards in Copenhagen.
Food-NewYork.com
Season Two (2022–2023) Speakers
Rami Abou-Khalil
Rami Abou-Khalil is a Lebanese-Canadian architect at the New York office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, with a body of work spanning mixed-use and institutional work.
Pooja Agrawal
Pooja Agrawal is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Public Practice. She is an architect and planner who previously worked at the Greater London Authority, Publica and We Made That. She is also the co-host of Sound Advice, and co-published Now You Know in 2021.
PublicPractice.org.uk
Deanna van Buren
Deanna Van Buren is the co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. An architecture and real estate non-profit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions, DJDS builds infrastructure that address its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources and the criminal justice system itself.
DesigningJustice.org
Carson Chan
Carson Chan is Curator of Architecture and Design, and the Director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment at the Museum of Modern Art.
CarsonChan.net
Tammy Eagle Bull
Tammy Eagle Bull, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, is recognized as the first Native American Woman architect in the US. She is the co-founder of Encompass Architects, p.c.
EncompassArch.com
David Fortin
David Fortin is an Associate Professor and Director of the McEwen School of Architecture and principal of David T Fortin Architect, Inc. His research interests centre on Indigenous design and speculative thinking in architecture. He is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
DavidTFortinArchitect.com
Benjamin Kaplan
Benjamin Kaplan is a multi-disciplinary designer, maker and creative thinker. He is currently Design Director in the Global Brand Experience Studio at Nike, where he leads a team that creates immersive, multi-sensory experiences for consumers all over the world. Previously, he has worked in a variety of roles across the fields of retail design, architecture, fabrication and fine art.
BVKaplan.com
Zeina Koreitem
Zeina Koreitem is a Lebanese architect and founding partner, with John May, of MILLIØNS, a Los Angeles-based experimental design practice. Their recent work includes a commission by the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts and the restoration and reimagining of the west wing of I.M. Pei’s Everson museum in Syracuse, NY. Prior to founding MILLIØNS, Koreitem worked in the offices of Dominique Perrault and RCR Arquitectes. Koreitem is design faculty at Sci-Arc. Her writing has been published in Project Journal, e-flux and Harvard Design Magazine.
MillionsArchitecture.com
Bryan C. Lee Jr.
Bryan C. Lee Jr. is the Founder and Design Principal of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice, in New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social and cultural equity. He is a Design Critic at Harvard GSD and a founding co-organizer of the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University. He was most recently honored as one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2018) and a USC Annenberg MacArthur Civic Media Fellow. Colloqate Design was a recipient of the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices award in 2019.
Colloqate.org
Ana María León
Ana María León’s work examines how architectures of struggle have shaped the modernity of the Americas. León is Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, where she teaches architectural history and theory with a focus on transnational connections across the American continent. She is co-founder of several research and practice collectives including Nuestro Norte es el Sur and the Settler Colonial City Project, and author of Modernity for the Masses (University of Texas Press, 2021).
AnaMariaLeon.net
Dominic Leong
Dominic Leong is an architect and founding partner of Leong Leong, an architecture studio and creative consultancy based in New York. At Leong Leong, Dominic works with diverse clients to build cultural resonance and advance social agendas within the built environment.
Leong-Leong.com
Alex Lin
Alex Lin is the Principal of Studio Lin, a graphic design practice established in 2009 in New York City. From books to exhibition design, Studio Lin's projects have focused on collaborations with notable artists, photographers, designers and cultural institutions including Tyler Mitchell, MOS Architects, OMA, Aperture, Dashwood Books, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Guggenheim, Canadian Centre for Architecture and Chamber Gallery. The recipient of awards from the AIGA, Art Director’s Club and D&AD, Alex has been recognized by the Art Director’s Club as a “Young Gun” and an “Avant Guardian” by Surface Magazine.
StudioLin.org
Ann Lui
Ann Lui is an architect and Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan. She co-founded Future Firm, an architecture and design research office in Chicago, that collaborates with folks who are changemakers in their own communities. She co-curated the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, "Dimensions of Citizenship," and currently organizes The Night Gallery, an exhibition of film and video work in public space in Chicago's South side.
Future-Firm.org
Jennifer Newsom
Jennifer Newsom is an architect, artist, Assistant Professor at Cornell AAP and cofounder of Dream The Combine with Tom Carruthers. Dream The Combine creates public art installations that challenge perceptions and bring people together. They are winners of the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, the 2020-2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, the 2021 McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, and are part of the curatorial ensemble for Counterpublic 2023.
DreamtheCombine.com
Jenny Nguyen
Jenny is the founder of Hello Human, a global PR collective for creatives. She is a seasoned communicator who is passionate about creativity, design and the people behind it. Jenny has worked primarily in the cultural and design sector for clients and collaborators including Airbnb, Art for Amnesty, Bottega Veneta, Domino Magazine, Frame Publishers, Kengo Kuma, Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, Robert Indiana, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s More Trees, Tantuvi, teNeues, The Philip Johnson Glass House, The Seaport District, Vogue Living, Yayoi Kusama and more.
HelloHuman.us
Eddie Opara
Eddie Opara began his career at ATG and Imaginary Forces and worked as senior designer-art director at 2×4 before establishing his own studio, The Map Office. He joined Pentagram’s New York office as partner in 2010. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and has appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Creative Review, Archis, Surface and Graphis. Opara is also a senior critic at the Yale University School of Art and is co-author of Color Works (Rockport, 2014). He was featured in Adweek’s Creative 100 in 2018, Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2012 and 2014, and in Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 list.
Pentagram.com
Photo by Ismil Waterman
Dori Tunstall
Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall is a design anthropologist, public intellectual and design advocate who works at the intersections of critical theory, culture and design. As Dean of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University, she is the first black and black female dean of a faculty of design.
Sumayya Vally
Sumayya Vally is the founder and Principal of Counterspace. Her design, research and pedagogical practice is committed to finding expression for hybrid identity and contested territory. She is obsessed with Johannesburg as a laboratory for finding new, speculative histories, futures and design languages; and is presently based between Johannesburg and London as the lead designer for the Serpentine Pavilion 2020/20 Plus 1. In 2021, she was recognized on the Time100 Next list of people "poised to make history."
Counterspace-studio.com
Grace Wales Bonner
Grace Wales Bonner launched her eponymous label in 2014. Informed by broad research encompassing critical theory, musical composition, literature and history, WALES BONNER embraces a multiplicity of perspectives, proposing a distinct notion of luxury, via a hybrid of European and Afro-Atlantic approaches. In 2015, she was awarded Emerging Menswear Designer at the British Fashion Awards. In 2016, following her first solo runway presentation, she received the LVMH Young Designer Prize. In 2019, Wales Bonner was announced the winner of the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund.
WalesBonner.net
Photo by Vincent Tullo
