Katherine Darnstadt is the founder of Latent Design, a progressive architecture and urbanism firm leveraging civic innovation and social impact to design more equitable spaces and systems. Since founding her practice in 2010, Katherine and her firm have prototyped new urban design systems to advance urban agriculture, support small business, created spaces for youth makers, advanced building innovation, and created public space frameworks. She and the firm have been published, exhibited and featured widely, most notably at the International Venice Architecture Biennial, Architizer A+ Awards, Chicago Ideas Week, NPR, American Institute of Architects Young Architects Honor Award winner and Crain’s Chicago 40 Under 40. She currently teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and previously at Northwestern University.

Kim Yao, AIA, is Principal of Architecture Research Office (ARO), a New York City firm dedicated to architecture that unites strategy and intelligence with beauty and form. ARO has earned over a hundred design awards including the 2020 National AIA Architecture Firm Award. Kim holds degrees from Columbia College: Columbia University and Princeton University. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP. She is on the Board for AIA New York and the Center for Architecture as the Immediate Past President of AIA New York.

Michael Young is an architect and educator practicing in New York City where he is a founding partner of the architectural design studio Young & Ayata and Assistant Professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union.

Troy Schaum is a partner in SCHAUM/SHIEH and Assistant Professor at the Rice School of Architecture. SCHAUM/SHIEH was named 2019 Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York, was one of the 2016 AIA New Practices New York, and awarded The Architect’s Newspaper 2018 Building of the Year.

Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is a media artist, director and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. His body of work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. In taking the data that flows around us as the primary material and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol paints with a thinking brush, offering us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expanding the possibilities of architecture, narrative, and the body in motion. Anadol’s site-specific AI data sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, its temporal and spatial dimensions, and the creative potential of machines.

Erica Stoller is an advisor to Esto Photographics and functions as a liaison connecting photographers, designers, and the press. She is an artist who repurposes simple, colorful industrial materials into hanging sculpture and is a member of A.I.R. Gallery.

Erleen Hatfield, PE, AIA, is the Managing Partner of the Hatfield Group- a multi-disciplinary engineering consulting firm based in New York. She has over 25 years of experience in the design of complex structures worldwide. With a keen appreciation for design and value, she has worked on iconic buildings around the world. She is both a licensed engineer and architect. She sits on numerous national industry boards and teaches at the Yale University School of Architecture. She frequently writes and presents on topics related to innovation and technology in engineering and architecture. Her firm, Hatfield Group, focuses on the synthesis of engineering and architecture, putting client value first. Hatfield Group uses bespoke engineering design and innovation to provide value and achieve their clients’ goals.

Architect-activist Pascale Sablan, champions women and diverse design professionals by documenting, curating and elevating their work. The objective: to create a just profession, bring social awareness to the built environment, and empower communities through design.

Jared Della Valle has been a real estate professional and architect for more than 20 years and has managed the acquisition and predevelopment of more than 2 million sf in New York City along the Highline, In the Hudson Yards, in DUMBO and in Downtown Brooklyn.

Jared Della Valle is Board Chair of the Van Alen Institute, sits on the Board of the Architecture League of New York, and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. He has previously taught at Columbia University, Syracuse University, Washington University, Parsons School of Constructed Environments and Lehigh University. Jared has widely lectured at major universities and institutions and his work has been the subject of more than 50 articles and publications including a monograph entitled “Think/Make” published by Princeton Architecture Press. He holds a B.A. from Lehigh University and Master’s degrees in both Architecture and Construction Management from Washington University, St. Louis, MO. He is a LEED Certified, licensed Architect in New York State, holds an NCARB (National College of Architectural Registration Boards) Certificate and is a licensed real estate broker and a Fellow of the AIA (American Institute of Architects).

Michael Hsu, AIA, IIDA is the founder and principal of Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, a fully integrated architecture and interior design firm. MHOA was founded in 2005 and has studios in both Austin and Houston.

Ann Yoachim is a Professor of Practice and Director of the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design at the Tulane University School of Architecture. Her research, teaching and practice focus on the intersections of built, natural, and socially constructed environments that impact health in rural and urban settings. In her role as Center Director, Ann provides strategic leadership by supporting collaborative community design projects and programs, managing key relationships, and identifying opportunities for growth. Ann holds a Master of Public Health degree from Tulane University and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and political science from Dickinson College. In 2012-2013, she was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

David A. Rubin, PLA, FASLA, FAAR is the founding principal of DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, a landscape architecture, urban design, and planning studio committed to practicing with an emphasis on socially-purposeful design strategies. David’s visionary contribution to the field in “empathy-driven design” is a hallmark of the studio, earning increasing renown for fusing issues of social justice in cities with excellence in the design of public spaces. Educated at Connecticut College and Harvard University, he has taught and lectured at a number of institutions, including Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and Southern California Institute of Architecture. David is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. His projects have received awards and honors from the American Society of Landscape Architects and the American Institute of Architects, among others.
David’s current work includes the National World War I Memorial, new comfort stations throughout the National Mall, and Franklin Park in Washington, D.C., multiple projects for the Fort Wayne Riverfront in Indiana, and a new plaza for Temple University in Philadelphia. His studio’s work includes diverse typologies in locations from Los Angeles to Rome, New York City, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

As the co-founder of Studio O+A, the San Francisco design firm responsible for groundbreaking offices at Facebook, Microsoft, Yelp, Cisco and many others, Verda Alexander has spent 28 years in the design industry redefining workplace. Combining a multi-disciplinary career with a passionate commitment to improving lives through design, her contribution to a project is to question received wisdom, test basic assumptions and look beyond conventional solutions to a more creative path. Her experimental projects, from pop-up installations on the future of workplace to a mobile design lab partnering with communities across California, have consistently opened new doors of exploration in the company’s approach to more mainstream projects.

Samuel Medina is the executive editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. He was previously the editorial director of Metropolis magazine. As a writer, his work has been published in art and architecture magazines such as Artforum, the Art Newspaper, and Domus, among others. He recently edited a monograph on the architect Eric Owen Moss, due out this year.

Ian Thomas is the art director of The Architect’s Newspaper. Previously, he worked in tech but left to pursue his passion for print design. He is a guest lecturer at Parsons School of Design and a current student of the Ryūsei-ha school of ikebana.