Sarah Aziz

Sarah Aziz is an interdisciplinary designer and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. Her background as a second-generation British Pakistani informs her research practice which maps patterns of migration across multiple scales and geographies. Currently, she is working with collaborators from across the Great Plains to tag, track, and build with tumbleweeds because they defy human-made borders and ask new questions of indigeneity and invasiveness. Her drawing work has been featured in AD, Architect, Soiled, POOL, and CLOG. Most recently, she was awarded an ACSA Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society, with Lindsey Krug to study the 18,200+ extraordinary Dollar General stores in America.

Hala Barakat

Hala Barakat, originally from Anabta, Palestine, joins us from Pullman, WA, in the Pacific Northwest. She holds M.Arch and MUCD degrees from the University of South Florida and is currently an Assistant professor of Architecture at the University of Idaho. Hala’s work challenges the sleights, injustices, and outright failures that architecture has perpetuated over time by suppressing marginalized populations in favor of majoritarian agendas. She believes in architecture’s ability to uncover hidden narratives of deracination. She resists the use of architecture to serve any political agenda and feels strongly about the creation of a space as an act of advocacy.

Carrie Bobo

Carrie Bobo works at the intersection of art and architecture exploring the ways we choose to make our home in the world today. An artist, educator, writer, and registered architect with more than 15 years of professional experience, Carrie runs her own research-oriented design firm in Brooklyn. She teaches on representation, climate responsive building forms, and indigeneity as a resource for the design of sustainable housing solutions with Parsons and New Jersey Institute of Technology where she runs the Scandinavia program. Previously she worked with ambitious female-led practices Sunnerö Architects in Göteborg, Sweden and Selldorf Architects in New York. Carrie’s work has been recognized in international design competitions and exhibited internationally. Carrie is committed to thoughtful urbanism, equity, holistic sustainability, and to understanding feminism’s implications for the built environment. 

Elgin Cleckley

Elgin Cleckley, NOMA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Design with an appointment in the Schools of Education and Nursing. Elgin is the Director of Design Justice at UVA’s Equity Center and principal of _mpathic design, a multi-award-winning pedagogy, initiative, and professional practice. After studying architecture at the University of Virginia and Princeton University, he collaborated with DLR Group (Seattle), MRSA Architects (Chicago), and Baird Sampson Neuert Architects (Toronto) on award-winning civic projects. Before returning to teach at UVA in 2016, Elgin was the 3D group leader and design coordinator at the Ontario Science Centre (Toronto) from 2001–2016.

Shahab Faroughi

Shahab Faroughi, a native of Iran, received a Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Tehran Azad University. After graduation, he started working on different scale projects and competitions at the office he co-founded. In 2013, Shahab moved to Brooklyn where he continued his studies at Pratt Institute and received an MS in Architecture. Following this, Shahab practiced in New York, where he led and collaborated on the design for various projects, competitions, and private commissions. Shahab is also an adjunct instructor at the New York Institute of Technology and likes to make code art in his spare time.

Patrick Girdler

Patrick Girdler is a designer who works at the intersection of art and architecture, with a focus on advanced fabrication methodologies and material research. In his practice, Patrick adopts a holistic approach to the architectural process, in which he is responsible for a project in its entirety from inception through development and fabrication. This approach enables a greater understanding and appreciation of the project as a whole. Patrick is the founder of After Hours which has seen the completion of several public installations and privately commissioned homes including Fractal and RK House. Concurrently, he is a senior designer at Snarkitecture with previous positions at Situ (New York), Koichi Takada Architects (Sydney) and Gehry Partners (Los Angeles).

Jimena Hogrebe Rodríguez

Jimena Hogrebe Rodríguez received her architecture degree from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2007 and received a Master in Arts in Architectural History from The Bartlett School of Architecture in London in 2010. Independently and collaboratively, she has dedicated herself to the design and development of architectural projects, research, writing, dissemination, and alternative projects that mix artistic practices. With more than ten years of teaching experience in different institutions, today she is a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of the UNAM and a part-time professor and researcher at the Anahuac Mexico University.

Swati Janu

Swati Janu is an architect and artist based in Delhi whose work engages with housing rights and social justice. By combining grassroots activism with policy advocacy, she has been advocating for the right to the city, against displacement and dispossession of self-built neighborhoods. She was awarded the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture 2022 and she is the founder of the interdisciplinary practice Social Design Collaborative. Recent exhibitions of her work on a socially engaged architectural practice include the Design Museum, London (2021), Maison de l’Architecture, Lyon (2022), Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana (2022) and Khoj International Artists’ Association, Delhi (2023). She regularly writes on urban issues, from participatory planning to public spaces.

Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee

Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee is the founder of Office of Human Resources, a critical design studio exploring intersections of post-colonial anxiety and utopian labor systems. She is currently the inaugural Architecture Fellow at Bard College in New York. Stephanie studied Anthropology and Studio Art at Wesleyan University and completed her Master of Architecture at Rice University. She has worked at Carlo Ratti Associati (Italy), OPEN Architecture (China), Shigeru Ban Architects (Japan), and designed exhibitions for the South Korean artist Lee Bul. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the 2020 Future Architecture Platform, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the 2021 Global Solutions Lab. Her work has been featured in The Funambulist, PLAT, and Archifutures 6.0: Agency (dpr-barcelona, 2020). She was included in the group exhibit Countrylife: Strategies for Tomorrow’s Rural Living at Haus der Architektur in Graz, Austria.

Lizzie MacWillie

Lizzie MacWillie is an architect, registered in the state of Texas, and urban designer. She is currently an adjunct instructor at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Lizzie was previously director at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP ([bc]), a nonprofit architecture and planning firm, where she oversaw the Dallas office. She received a Master of Architecture in Urban Design and a Master of Design Studies in Art, Design, and the Public Domain from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.