Biographies

Venkatkrishnan Ashok is a trained Architect with an experience spanning 15 years. He is passionate about the connections between abstract art and Architecture and all that falls in between.

Venkatkrishnan and Saurabh are currently teaching at Rachana Sansad’s Academy of Architecture and are conducting a studio in Urban Design; where the said complexities are systematically deciphered and represented using drawing as a polemic / tool for speculation.

Anna & Eugeni Bach is a Finnish-Spanish team based in Barcelona working on a broad concept of architecture, design and arts.

Their projects have been widely published in national and international magazines, and have been exhibited in venues like the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2016 (Golden Lion) and in the solo exhibition “Elective Affinities”. Some highlights from their awards and recognitions include the nomination to the Mies van der Rohe Awards and the Nomination to the Iakov Chernikhov International Prize for Young Architects as well as the International FAD Award. Among their projects, their intervention “Mies Missing Materiality”, which radically transformed Mies van der Rohe´s Barcelona pavilion, recently gained international attention.

Anna is a PDI Professor of Interior Design at EINA, Barcelona University of Art and Design and Eugeni is an Associate Professor of Architecture in the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB) and guest lecturer at Pamplona School of Architecture (UNAV).

José Cadilhe graduated as an architect from the Escola Superior Artística do Porto, Portugal, in 2005 and obtained a Master’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism at the Architectural Association School of Architecture - Design Research Laboratory, London, in 2012.

In 2009, he founded his architectural practice dIONISO LAB. The work tries to challenge contemporary architecture with innovative concepts and new design approaches. The studio is also a research platform that is strongly engaged with material experimentation and transformative processes.

His work has been awarded with several national and international awards and published worldwide. Recently, he received the European Architecture and Design Award 40under40 and considered one of the Europe’s most important and emerging young architects and designers.

Lic. Lic. MFA, Nayari Castillo-Rutz Molecular Biologist and Artist (MFA Public Art and New Artistic Strategies, Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar, DE). Specialized in Public Art her interventions engage with history, time and space, with especial emphasis in experiments in perception and engagement. Castillo has won multiple prizes and bursaries including the Bursary for the Arts of the city of Graz (AT) and the CIFO prize 2014, Miami (USA). She has worked as coordinator of international projects - Stories from the Edge (storiesfromtheedge.net) and more recently - Inverting Battlefields‖(inclusiveeurope.net). She has work as lecturer and invited professor in several universities, especially at the IZK at TU, at the moment she works as University Researcher at the Institute of Spatial Design.

Chiara Cavalieri is Architect and PhD in Urbanism (IUAV Venice). Over the last years, she collaborated and taught in the field of architecture and urbanism at a number of different international institutions, i.e. UCL Louvain, EPFL Lausanne, ENSAP Lille, ITMO S. Petersburg, GSD Harvard, IUAV Venice. She was involved in several research programs, such as "Espace Bleu de l’Eurométropole" (EPFL; Studio PaolaViganò), "Horizontal Metropolis: a radical project" (EPFL), exhibited at Bozar (2018) and at the Venetian Biennale (2016), "Ignis Mutat Res: Energie et recyclage" (IUAV; Studio Secchi-Viganò) and "Water and asphalt: the project of isotropy" (IUAV). She is currently professor in Urbanism at UCLouvain and member of executive committee of Habitat research Center, EPFL.

Explores as an artists the different techniques behind the abstraction of his own observations. He tries to create a new formal language depicting clear essentialised shapes. His mediums are drawing, collages and neonlight.

Marion Devillers lives and works in Montpellier where she currently is a tenured professor of visual arts at the school of Architecture.

She is a graduate in architecture of ENSAPB (the national school of architecture Paris-Belleville) and was later trained to ceramic through several apprenticeships both in France and in India.

Her architectural background leads her work to focus on the dialogue between form and physical resistance of material. Nowadays she works as a visual artist. Her sculptures aim to define space as a constructive idea of materiality.

The German performance artist Helena Dietrich is since six years working and living in Brussels. After her Master in Visual Communication at the Merz Academy Stuttgart, she conducted a research project at a.pass in Brussels. Her artistic approach is often process-based and involves the audience as participants at different stages. She is interested in creating situations, where, through atmospheric installations, objects, images and costumes transformative experiences can take place. Her work has been exhibited amongst others at Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Beursschouwburg Brussels, WoWmen festival, Playground festival, Buda Kortrijk, Something Raw festival, Hors Pistes / Cinema Galeries Brussels.
She is currently involved in a research project at Kask Hogeschool and teaches at Luca school of arts.

Christelle Gualdi is an architect working mostly as architectural consultant and researcher for prospective agencies. She’s the architectural manager of the international project developer LIFE working on international large scale housing project, defining identities, new living typologies and researching about co-living.

She worked several years at MVRDV in Rotterdam and Architecture Action in Paris, gave workshops and lectures in architecture schools in Europe. She collaborated with large advertising and retail companies in Paris and cultural institutions like Palais de Tokyo. She recently worked on the book ‘Door to Door: Future of the Vehicle, Future of the City’ (2016) about the impact of new transportation systems and the sharing economy on our cities and our urban lives. She graduated from the Ecole d’Architecture de la Ville et des Territories in Marne-La-Vallée and TU Delft. She works in Paris and in Belgium.

Since 2013 Nina Haarsaker has been in charge of the second semester of Architecture studies. She is currently in charge of the cross-disciplinary idea-generating course "Experts in Team - FORM lab", in addition to the last semester of Master in Architecture at NTNU. She graduated as architect from NTNU in 2001, after studies in aesthetics - and later architecture studies in Trondheim, Madrid, Delft and Lund. Her last completed construction project was in 2014: https://sunne-hus.net. Her professional focus are on creative methods, materials & tectonics and case studies within the educational milieu Making is Thinking at NTNU, which aims to challenge architectural design habits by offering courses and workshops that enable experiences of hands-on making and performative actions.

NTNU. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Faculty of Architecture and Design. Department of Architecture and Technology. Center for FORM, TRANSark and Making is Thinking. http://makingisthinking.net.

DI. Dr. techn. Franziska Hederer is Associate Professor at the Institute of Spatial Design at Graz University of Technology. With her study On the Oscillating Boundaries of Architecture she received the venia docendi for Spatial Perception and Experimental Design in 2015. Her research and teaching focuses on the exploration of artistic practices, especially the performing arts, as tools for spatial perception and for sensitizing our understanding of space. She also realizes performances in public space and from 2011 until 2018 she served as coordinator of the architecture program at FORUM STADTPARK Graz. Teaching activities at University of Liverpool, University of Antwerp, KTH Stockholm, University of Nova Gorica and University of Applied Arts Vienna.

With a background in architecture, Hannes has progressively expanded his creative and theoretical boundaries as an artist. Primarily active as a maker and videographer, he continuously observes his surroundings and the subconscious ethology. His films illustrate irrationalities of the trans-urban landscape. His installations and artworks aim to inconvenience the interaction between humans and their daily objects to further question their habits. Furthermore, he takes active part in the research of sustainability within the design practice and the business of the food industry.

With an abundance of interests and skills, such as speculative design, architectural acupuncture, hacking, moulding, woodwork and audio-visual arts, he conveys his concerns about a society that has lost its self-awareness. His works and theoretical writings have earned him to win e.g. the Henry van de Velde Prize 2015 and a number of publications for an unconventional approach towards architecture and beyond.

Diego Inglez de Souza (São Paulo, 1978) is an architect, urban planner and teacher at the Universidade Católica de Pernambuco (Unicap). Author of Reconstruindo Cajueiro Seco: Arquitetura, política social e cultura popular em Pernambuco, 1960–64 (2010) in addition to many articles on architecture, social housing and urban history published in Europe and in Brazil.

Dian-Jen Lin is a London-based transdisciplinary designer with the academic rigour of a researcher, the analytical rationality of a scientist and the aesthetic sensitivity of an artist.

With over 7 years of professional experience, she has worked across sustainability research, design (material/costume/fashion/graphic/packaging/system), filmmaking, photography, contemporary art curation and silver metalwork. The broad skill set has equipped her with unconventional intelligence and an aptitude for creative communication and innovative thinking.

With an innate awareness of the symbiosis between humanity and nature, she believes that design should always be drenched in sustainability and dignity, which has led to her success in winning the Kering Award 2017 of Sustainability Innovation for Stella McCartney and the nomination of A/D/O Water Futures Research Programme. Her design trajectory has thus been focusing on ameliorating the status quo by active engagement and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Qiyao Li is an architect and interior designer. She has worked for UN Studio, Buro Ole Shereen, and is currently a design associate at SOM NY. Qiyao holds a BS in Biology from Peking University, and a MArch from University of Pennsylvania.

Together as The Open, Qiyao Li, Isaiah Miller and Henry Ng are passionate about architecture’s capacity to respond to pressing social, economic and human issues. They are currently working on a mixed-use development in Harlem, NY, as well as a proposal for new affordable housing in Queens.

Rocio Marano is a movement researcher and performance artist based in Berlin. Graduated from Escola Superior d'Art i Disseny and part of a Psycho-physical Theather Company in Mallorca for three years, danceWEB scholarship recipient 2016 and member of MUDPACK Collective devoted to research immersive performativities within the techno field. She has shown work in Biennial de Performance de Buenos Aires 2017, P-Bodies Festival, Sophiensaele, Martin Gropius Bau Museum, between others. She is interested in the relation body-mind, employing the body as a tool to explore different states, and in dealing with the question of consciousness through embodiment and through emotional and sensual experiences. As a performer, she has worked with theater makers, choreographers, and artists including K.A.U Kollektiv and Tino Sehgal (Kiss) 2018. She maintains an on-going collaboration with Lea Kieffer under the pseudonym of Los(t) Ninjas. They investigate movement and performance under improvisational structures combining intensive physicality, somatics practices, imagination and PLAY, and encompassing a whole range of physical contact. They have shared their practice in different contexts, Festivals and Workshops in Europe, Southamerica and Northamerica.

Partner at O Norte – Oficina de Criação, Lula graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal University of Pernambuco (1997), with a Master's degree from the University of Texas at Austin, USA (2007). He has worked and is currently associated with the CMPBS (Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems) in Austin/Texas, one of the oldest American NGO’s dedicated to sustainable practices in design. In 2010, he worked on the team of Michael Reynolds, the American architect who created Earthship, an integrated off-the-grid building system. Since 2014, he has been a professor at the Architecture Department of UNICAP (Universidade Católica de Pernambuco). In 2014, he co-founded AtelierVivo, a collective focused on design-build interventions. Lula is also a musician and a painter.

Yalenka Mariën has a master’s degree in Product Development from the University of Antwerp. After her studies she started working at Fjord Paris, part of the consultancy Accenture, as a Service and Interaction designer. She hones her design education skills as she continues to teach Design Research at Les Gobelins in Paris and through the training she gives at Namahn.

Saurabh Mhatre is a trained Architect with a Masters Degree in Urban Design from Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is passionate about the simple complexities of the urban form and the resulting drawing cultures.

Saurabh and Venkat are currently teaching at Rachana Sansad’s Academy of Architecture and are conducting a studio in Urban Design; where the said complexities are systematically deciphered and represented using drawing as a polemic / tool for speculation.

Isaiah Miller is an architectural and urban designer. He has worked for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Kengo Kuma, and OMA NY. Isaiah is currently a senior designer at SOM NY. Isaiah holds an MUP from Harvard and MArch from Yale.

Together as The Open, Qiyao Li, Isaiah Miller and Henry Ng are passionate about architecture’s capacity to respond to pressing social, economic and human issues. They are currently working on a mixed-use development in Harlem, NY, as well as a proposal for new affordable housing in Queens.

Henry Ng is an architect and researcher. He has worked for AMO, the Berlage Center, and WorkAC in NYC. Henry currently works at Foster+Partners. Henry holds a BA and MArch from Yale.

Together as The Open, Qiyao Li, Isaiah Miller and Henry Ng are passionate about architecture’s capacity to respond to pressing social, economic and human issues. They are currently working on a mixed-use development in Harlem, NY, as well as a proposal for new affordable housing in Queens.

Lise Pérot lives and works in Paris.

Independent scenographer, she has been practicing for fifteen years, both in the field of the exhibition and the event. These two parallel activities allow her to tackle projects at different scales.

Graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2002, in scenography section, she worked from 2004 to 2015 at Skertzò, precursor studio in the field of scenography associated with the projected image.

Since then, her reflection combines virtual images with decor and architecture. Video mapping is at the heart of his professional experience.

Tiiu Poldma is a pioneer in the domain of design research theory. She's Vice Dean of Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and has been an associate professor, Interior Design Program, at the School of Industrial Design since 2000.

She's also full researcher at the CRIR, (the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal), and currently the Director of the Research Group GRID( Group for Research in Illumination and Design).

Tiiu is one of the few women in Canada with a Doctor of Philosophy in Interior design education. She won the title 'compagnon de Ferdie', for her work in raising the quality of teaching and promoting excellence in professional interior design. She teaches the importance of integrating design with concern for the well-being of the population being served, particularly vulnerable populations such as children and the aged.

João Quintela is graduated in architecture from U. Autónoma de Lisboa. Currently develops his PhD at ESTA Madrid. Curator at KAIROS Pavilion and Animita Papel visual arts edition. Between 2012 and 2017 was teaching assistant at UD Campo Baeza at ETSAM and currently is assistant at UAL with the artist Carlos Nogueira.

JQTS is an architecture studio working between Lisbon and Hamburg. The work consists in a serial research into the open field of architecture combined with a process of learning from the empirical knowledge.

Gro Rødne is an architect and an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Design, NTNU. She has recently become the IAT-department unity leader of the Center for FORM. She graduated in 1993 as an architect from the Faculty of Architecture at NTH, and continued at the Academy of Fine Arts. Gro was one of three founders of Agraff Architects (www.agraff.no), and has been a working partner, chair and member of the board (2001-2016). Gro has been course coordinator for the first year of the Master program in Architecture during six years and has been the initiator and coordinator of the master course Making is Thinking. She is developing the pilot “Making is Thinking” as a part of TRANSark, www.ntnu.edu/transark, including an experimental learning lab.

NTNU. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Faculty of Architecture and Design. Department of Architecture and Technology. Center for FORM, TRANSark and Making is Thinking. http://makingisthinking.net.

Tim Simon is graduated in architecture from Universität der Künste Berlin. Currently develops his PhD at HafenCity Universität Hamburg. Curator at KAIROS Pavilion. Between 2015 and 2017 was teaching assistant at the TU München with Uta Graff, and currently is assistant at the HafenCity Universität Hamburg.

JQTS is an architecture studio working between Lisbon and Hamburg. The work consists in a serial research into the open field of architecture combined with a process of learning from the empirical knowledge.

Michaël Stas is ir. Architect and Urbanist (KULeuven and IUAV Venice). After graduation he started at Architecture Workroom Brussels, working on the research and exhibition of ‘A Good City Has Industry’. Thereafter he worked for Studio Paola Viganò on several projects going from a landscape park, urban projects and public spaces to large scale territorial visions, such as l’Espace Bleu de l’Eurométropole, for which he also organised a series of workshops. He was project leader for ‘Over de Ring - segment Southeast’. In addition he was one of Paola Viganò’s teaching assistants at EPFL Lausanne. Currently he is working for the Flemish Government on the new program of spatial transformation, combined with teaching in cartography and territorial representation at ENSAP Lille.

Justine Syen has a master’s degree in Product Development from the University of Antwerp and continued with a year at the prestigious Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design. Afterwards, she joined the international design consultancy Frog in Milan as an experience designer. There she has been focussing on projects within healthcare, telecom and IoT while taking some time each year to teach service design at Supsi.

Anne Britt Torkildsby has a background in industrial design from Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, holds a PhD in design from The Swedish School of Textiles, and is currently doing research at The Norwegian Laboratory of Universal Design; The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Her research interests are in the areas of Critical Design thinking applied in Universal Design settings (theory and design methodology), Universal Design for Higher Learning (teaching methods and learning materials), and last but not least, how the Built Environment affect our health and well-being.

https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/anne.torkildsby

http://www.ntnu.edu/ivb/norwegian-research-laboratory-for-univeral-design

Traumnovelle is a militant faction founded by three Belgian architects: Léone Drapeaud, Manuel León Fanjul and Johnny Leya. Traumnovelle uses architecture and fiction as analytical, critical and subversive tools to emphasize contemporary issues and dissect their resolutions. Traumnovelle alternates between cynicism and enthusiasm all the while advocating for critical thinking in architecture. Traumnovelle champions a multi-disciplinary approach with architecture at the crossroads. Traumnovelle distances itself from current forms of naive architecture and refuses to glorify the mundane. Traumnovelle sides with those who have not sacrificed ambition and criticism. Traumnovelle is curator of the Belgian Pavilion at the 2018 Biennale di Venezia. Their project "Eurotopie" champions a multi-disciplinary approach with architecture at the crossroads and questions the relationships between architecture and politics.

Assistant Professor of Design at UA / Design for Interaction / Care & Care Technology

In 1996, Kristof obtained his master degree in Product Development from the University College of Antwerp. Between 1997 and 2015, he worked as a product designer and freelance consultant for various design teams and offices: Bulo Office Furniture, Achilles design, Studio Dott., Peel, etc.! In those years, he acquired design experience in human-centered design, service design, concept development, and engineering design.

Since 2006, he combines his activities as a freelance product designer with an academic career. In April 2014, he obtained a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. In 2015, he became a full-time Assistant Professor of Design at the Faculty of Design Sciences in Antwerp. His work is driven by a fond passion for human-product interactions and care technology. His research on ‘Product Stigmaticity’ or stigma-free design aims to improve day-to-day life for people who depend on assistive devices or assistive technology. The goal is to relieve users of the social stress related to using these solutions. The stigma-free design tools and measuring techniques that he developed, strive to go beyond the physical adaptation between user and product and aim for products that support the user’s personal and social well-being.

As a lecturer at the Faculty of Design Sciences his teachings include: product semantics, inclusive design, and design for wellbeing. 
As a design tutor, he guides students in projects such as: exploring human-product interactions, product-service-systems, and master projects in product development. 

Works as a architect and urban planner. His works varies from renovation of old Buddhist temples to new contemporary renovation projects. besides his professional work he works on the position of the concept ‘utopia’ within contemporary architecture theory.