Biographies

Patricia Guaita and Raffael Baur co-initiated several research and teaching projects that explore the relationship of craft and fabrication to space, tectonics and the human being. They met at the EPFL in 2010 where their common interests in architectural education led them to develop a pedagogy of making, tested and refined through several project collaborations, notably the interdisciplinary research project A Prototype Pavilion in Textile Reinforced Concrete, EPFL (since 2019) and the Open City Research Platform, EPFL and PUCV, Valparaiso (2013-19). From 2020-22 they were Invited Professors at the HEIA Fribourg where they led the design studio Construction Cycles. Patricia and Raffael have their own professional practices in Lausanne and Zürich, with an upcoming project collaboration.

Workshop: #1 Drawing Research Week

Julian Brües is an architect, teacher and editor in Vienna. He worked for offices such as Lederer Ragnasdottir and Furrer Jud. Since March 2020 he has been working as a research assistant at the department of Raum und Gestalt at TU Graz. In 2020, he received the Start Scholarship with which he founded ‘Diskursiv’, an association for architectural research. Wherehe co-directed the book “Models”.

Wassily Walter is an architect and teacher between Berlin and Vienna. From 2019, he has been working for Kuehn Malvezzi where he was involved in several cultural projects across Europe such as the interreligious initiative of House of One, the conversion of Batiment d‘Art Contemporain or the extension of Komische Oper. Since 2021 he teaches with Wilfried Kuehn and Pier Paolo Tamburelli at TU Vienna.

Workshop: #2 What we can learn from Maison Martin Margiela

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Prof. Eulalia Gomez-Escoda is an architect and PhD in Urbanism.

She is Associate Professor at the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the Barcelona School of Architecture ETSAB-UPC Barcelona Tech. Since 2021, she is Deputy Director of International Relations at ETSAB-UPC Barcelona Tech.

She is alo Design Critic at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (fall 2019), invited professor at international schools such as the School of Architecture of KU Leuven, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts KADK, the German University in Cairo, the Universidad Mayor at Santiago de Chile and the Graduate School of Planning and Preservation GSAPP at Columbia University. Postdoc Researcher at LUB, Barcelona Urbanism Laboratory. Independent professional activity and collaborations with firms developing public projects of Architecture, Urbanism, Public Space and Landscape.

Emma O’Connell is an architect from the south of Italy based in Barcelona. She graduated from Barcelona’s Polytechnic University with a thesis on the role of outdoor terraces in Barcelona and Milan. Currently, she collaborates with BAU Architecture and Urbanism and develops her research on informal food distribution systems in Europe. Her research has been recently published in indexed journals.

Workshop: #3 When food storms the squares

Dewi Brunet is an artist specialized in folding, as a technique, as an art, as a field of research. More than 15 years of practice in folding led him to gain a strong expertise in origami, pleating and crumpling techniques. His work currently focuses on the link between eco­logy and technology through robotic folded creations. More info here. 

Gwenaël Prost is a designer, based in Rennes. His practice evolve between experimentation with mate­rials and transmission. The fold never ceases to fasci­nate him, bringing him into the inexhaustible field of relations between art and science. More info here.​

Dewi and Gwen co-founded in 2021, with Théo Philippot, "Diatom", a studio focused on folded creation for performing arts and the event industry

Workshop: #4 Pattern and chaos

Hussein Shikha and Sadrie Alves are collaborators working on the ongoing project ‘Tales of Symbologies’ . They have shared their research in various contexts and workshops such as Open Design Course and Extra City.
Hussein Shikha is a multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, writer, and researcher. He was born and raised in Iraq and moved to Antwerp in 2009. He graduated with an MA in visual arts from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. His work deals with the preservation, translation, and digitization of the visual culture from his intersectional experience as an Iraqi-Belgian. Currently, he is doing research on the erasure of handmade Iraqi tapestries and its idea of ‘beauty’ that relates to Islamic art, as a way to de-modernize his creative practices. Sadrie Alves is a Belgian Brazilian multidisciplinary artist, illustrator and performer currently living in Brussels. The core of her artistic practice departs from drawing as a symbolic action and as a catalyst for tender narratives and collaboration. She sees drawing as writing as singing as crafting. Her work is inspired by oral histories, myths, and the beings that inhabit them.

Workshop: #5 Tales of Symbologies: Subjective Mapping. Centering traditions and philosophies associated with tapestries.

Beste Ozcan works at the nexus of design, technology and science. She is a postdoc research fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy (ISTC-CNR) working on interactive smart devices. She is the founder of “Transitional Wearable Companions (TWCs)” concept, brand, and its first applied award-winning prototype called “PlusMe”, which is a particular type of wearable social companion for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and “IM-TWIN system” concept, which is an AI-based system for smart therapy of children with ASD. She is also interested in developing other types of experimental smart devices to augment empathy and reduce the anxiety of humans. She is the author of the book “H+ design: time, space, human, machine”.

Muriel De Boeck is a PhD student in Product Development at the University of Antwerp. Her research focuses on human augmentation, which refers to near-body products that enhance human abilities through the development of technological improvements as an integral part of the human body. She aims to develop a research-based framework for the development of human augmentation products that strengthen the user’s individual and contextual identity through social empowerment while respecting ethical boundaries and sociocultural values. Product semiotics, which poses that products can communicate additional meaning through their appearance, therefore plays an imperative role within her research.

Workshop: #6 Design Against Taboo (DAT): new insights into the mean-making process of wearable design exploration

Davide Cauciello (1992) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta (ULB) with a thesis on the contradictions between income levels and quality of life in rural, peripheral and urban areas of the Brussels metropolitan region. As a member of Latitude Platform and in the framework of several research projects, he has worked at the organisation of participatory workshops involving a plurality of actors, both institutional and associative.

Octavio Pineiro Aramburu (1993) is a graduated architect from the Faculty of Architecture La Cam­bre-Horta (ULB). As a collaborator within Latitude Platform, he worked on the researches Brusseau and Cities of Making by producing analytica! maps, conducting on-field interviews, preparing exhibitions and organizing co-analysis and co-construction work­shops with universities, institutions and citizens.

Workshop: #7 GRIJZE MATERIE

Celeste Tellarini is an architect, urban designer and documenter based in Brussels. Her interest lies on a non-conforming perception of the realm, far from labels, binary oppositions and strict definitions. In 2020 she completed her studies in Politecnico di Milano (IT) and Manchester School of Architecture (UK) and since 2019 Celeste is part of the architecture office Dogma (BE). In 2021 she entrablished a multitude: an open research and design practice spanning from discipline to discipline. In 2022 Celeste collaborated with the University of Melbourne, Politecnico di Milano and ULiege. Since 2018 Celeste meticulously documents ultraordinariness through microelements and Details of superordinary places: ongoing photographic series shared daily over social medias.

Workshop: #8 Brutal and banal with a hint of floral

Susie Brand-de Groot has now been a teacher in Design Visualization Techniques for over 20 years at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology. Over the years she developed herself to be an independent teacher and design coach, focusing on the visualization part of design processes. Last years she broadens her knowledge in the field of the meaning of form in designs. With her students she researches the influence of individual perception on how we experience form and she researches what body posture has to do with our perception of form. Beside at TU Delft Susie has worked as a teacher for multiple educational institutions, ranging from retail and mechanical engineering students in The Netherlands to interior & design students in Belgium, and has held workshops in Belgium, Sweden and Italy. As a young Interior Architect Susie specialized in theater design. Nowadays still, her ambition is to reinforce the vision of a director through design. She loves working closely with both director and actors to enhance the play together. In this, she doesn’t shy away from challenging the actors with her designs, making the story stronger along the way.

Workshop: #9 per [by means of] FORM [shape; figure; mode; semblance]

Florian Mahieu and Corentin Dalon both work for Bento architects. Bento is an association of architects that places material experimentation at the center of its thinking. Living matter questions the sustainability of our current production methods and their impact on our lifestyles. Based on this observation and/or this obligation, the architects of Bento make a point of exalting it, going beyond it, to bridge the gap between architecture, art and design. It is around these reflections that Bento won the European Architecture competition Europan 16, on the Brussels site, by proposing to transform the Center for Modern Architecture, the CIVA, into a center for experimentation and production around regenerative materials; and winner of the next Belgian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Workshop: #10 Laboratory of the future

Artem Kitaev and Leonid Slonimskiy both work for KOSMOS architects.
KOSMOS is an internationally recognized award-winning architectural practice, that collaborates virtually and brings together partners from different parts of Europe. KOSMOS works on projects of diverse scales and typologies: from furniture, art installations, temporary pavilions and private houses to big public buildings, such as sport centers, office buildings, airports and museums; as well as masterplans, including big urban parks and territorial development projects. We believe that architecture is collaborative, inclusive and multidisciplinary profession, and we often collaborate with other architects, artists, political activists, sociologists, photographers, poets, etc. The diversity of geographical contexts, collaborations and building typologies on which we work allows KOSMOS to be able to rethink the conventional approach to design and propose novel, non-typical solutions. Work of KOSMOS was widely published and exhibited. KOSMOS received the Prize of Geneva for Experimental Architecture, multiple prizes for best public buildiings and was named the “New European Generation” by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui magazine in 2022.

Workshop: #11 PRIMITIVE HUT

Alexander Auris is a Peruvian architect and researcher based in Brussels (PUCP Peru and KU Leuven). He has contributed in the exhibition Institution Building at CIVA and Oslo Architecture Triennale; and has been a fi nalist at Venice Architecture Film Festival with his short movie 4.6 km. His work unfolds from an intimate exploration of his intersectionality in relation to space and it is presented in different types of media such as video, writing, performance, and spatial design. His research project Queer World proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of queerness in the built environment. He has tested this research in Berlin, Pristina, Lima, Brussels and continues to expand it to other cities.

Lucas de Mello Reitz is a Brazilian-Luxembourgian Architect (UDESC and Universidad de Sevilla, 2014), Master in Urbanism, History and Architecture of the City (UFSC, 2016), currently lives in Brussels. Independent architect in projects of varied scales and themes, also producing workshops on architecture and art, focusing on critical history of the city, contemporary art and queer theory. Collaborator professor from 2016 and 2022 in public and private Brazilian institutions. Active member in Arquitetura Bicha, reference in queer architecture in Brazil. Artistic fellow at Université Laval (2022); Winner of the Elisabete Anderle Award (Brazil, 2021); Curator and creator of Paralela Arquitetura e Artes (Architecture Council Prize 2018) and the curatorial project Museu do que nos resta (3rd The Wrong Bienale, 2021).

Workshop: #12 A Soft Storm

Iga Górniak has literally built her career with LEGO bricks, but that never has stopped her from thinking out of the box. She is a multidisciplinary polish designer and artist, exploring the concept of play in design and its value in learning processes. After her graduation in 2016 from Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Iga has developed concepts for the future of play in LEGO Creative Play Lab and got specialised in Design for Play on Design School Kolding’s Master’s degree programme. Working as a freelancer in Denmark, she has co-designed two interactive experiences at LEGO House, and developed characters for a playful AR adventure introducing children to libraries across the country. Fascinated by the process of co-creation and facilitation, Iga has participated in multiple social projects and cultural events performing play experiments in a public realm. At the moment, she is exploiting her knowledge as a teacher and communication designer in the international high school environment at Akademeia High School in Warsaw. Working as a creative educator, Iga has co-founded clubs and workshops exploring sustainable social innovation, while researching playful learning methods.

Workshop: #13 Dreamers Disease

Saurabh Mhatre is a trained Architect with a Masters Degree in Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His work operates along a broad spectrum of scales, from urban design and architecture to interior architecture and object design. He is passionate about the complexities of the urban form and it’s critical inquiry through drawing which operates as a polemic.

Atula Sahani is a trained Architect with a Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture. She is passionate about the delicate relationship between the built and the natural environment and engages rigorously to optimise this balance through research and practice in order to achieve positive social and environmental outcomes for future society.

Workshops: #14 An Imaginative Play

Livni Holtz (*1995 in Zurich) is a designer with a background in object design. Working on a sailing ship, as an art locksmith in Munich, as a silversmith in Nepal and as a furniture maker in the Zurich design studio «Nektar design» have shaped his way of designing objects. His mentors along the way have shaped his way of thinking. Since 2020, he has had the opportunity to reinterpret the accumulated experience and explore alternative working methods as part of his degree at the Design Academy Eindhoven. His practice evolved in the DAE studios Technogeographies, led by Martina Muzi, and Invisible, led by Mario Minale. Through this research-based approach, an interest in hidden cultural phenomena emerged. Through performance, film and objects, he seeks to understand subjectivities and transform them into concept and form. Lives and works in Eindhoven and Zurich.

Workshop: #15 Difference and Repetition

Alessia Bertini (1993) and Michel Kessler (1992) both work for Teorema.
Teorema is the collaborative project of four ETH/EPFL/AAM architects that focuses on the exegesis of space, technology and landscape through sound, film and textual media. The nature of their work is based on the belief that space is increasingly dematerialized and that the mutated role of architects is to map out zones for connections, relationships and systems. It is on this ground that the interest in impalpable factors and the unveiling of their collateral agents rests, carefully observing and adjusting the reading of an intertwined globe.

Their members are involved in academic (ETH), editorial and practical activities. Their individual and collective projects have been part of a number of festivals such as the Biennale svizzera del territorio, Lugano (2022) / Dixit Algorizmi - The Garden of Knowledge, 59th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia (2022) / gta exhibitions and e-flux Architecture (2020) and published in ARCH+, e-flux, CARTHA, NZZ.

Workshop: #16 Antwerp soundscapes

María Mazzanti is a Colombian spatial practitioner, writer and educator. She works as an editor and organizer at Failed Architecture and teaches at The Sandberg Instituut and Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her practice is concerned with ideas of climate catastrophe, infrastructure and feminist frameworks. She was a research fellow at The Sandberg Instituut (2021-2022).

Anna Bierler works as an independent graphic designer in Rotterdam. She is interested in publishing gestures: how they create relational experiences and how they can elucidate ways of doing and living together on this damaged planet. Anna’s work materializes as publications, radio programs, workshops (most recently at Zone2Source, StrandLab, Hackers and Designers), writing sessions and poetry.

Anna and María share research interests and collaborate on radio and publishing projects.

Workshop: #17 Storytelling for earthly survival

Andy Milligan is a Senior Lecturer, researcher, PhD first supervisor, and Programme Director of Interior & Environmental Design at DJCAD Dundee and previously taught at institutions in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. He uses sculptural processes to examine the interior as an expanded practice through installations, objects and mise-en-scène strategies to reveal allegorical and analytical insights that build upon earlier investigations on domestic, technological, and utopian ideas, or domestechtopias. Andy’s recent works were exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2022) and at the Confluence: Traditions in Contemporary Art, Dundee (2022) and previously at Montclair State University, USA and Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China. He has exhibited interior works in the UK, Finland, Germany, USA, Czech Rep, Canada, and China and he is an invited lecturer in USA, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Belgium, and external examiner in Portsmouth School of Architecture.

Workshop: #18 MAKEup

Ko Nakatsu graduated from the design program at Carnegie Mellon University and currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Ko Nakatsu is a design exec specializing in identifying, conceptualizing, and launching all new products, physical and digital. He builds and runs design teams. He grows and sponsors design leaders and has relevant experience with speculative/critical design with Nissan (mobility transportation concepts 20 years out), teaching AR design at Academy of Art, and future product concepts at Amazon. 

Currently, his team owns the designs for the largest product portfolio at Salesforce (Service Cloud).  He has industry experience in B2B (Salesforce, Amazon), fintech (Amazon consumer and business payments), B2C (Amazon Music, Adidas, Logitech, etc), healthcare (Medtronic, Blue Shield, AstraZeneca), IoT (AstraZeneca, Amazon Business), Augmented Reality (Amazon, Academy of Art), automotive (Nissan, Infiniti), emerging markets (Amazon, Nissan, Unilever), and education (Blackboard).

Workshop: #19 If I knew then, what I know now

Lara Weller and Jan-Micha Gamer studied product design together at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd. They wrote their bachelor‘s thesis together on the topic "Faktum Mortalitatis - Humans‘ ephemerality in their environment“. 

Jan-Micha Gamer later studied Social Design (MA) at the Design Academy Eindhoven. He works as a designer for circular economy, artist for sustainability and educational consultant for creative environmental education. In the field of education, he develops workshops for companies, adults, as well as children and young people on material flows, global connections of products and waste, as well as sufficiency. 

Lara Weller studied Product Design and sustainable product cultures (MA) at Bauhaus-University Weimar. For her Masterthesis she developed materials in a resilient, honest and sustainable design context. She works as a consultant at a material library specialized in byproducts, regrowing and biodegradable materials.

Workshop: #20 Design for Ephemerality