Jim Burnett

Jim Burnett is a leading voice in contemporary landscape design. As a writer, advocate and designer, Jim has helped expand the role of landscape architects as creators and protectors of public space. A graduate of Louisiana State University, he founded the Office of James Burnett in 1989. Under his leadership, OJB has earned more than 100 design awards, including the 2020 National Design Award for Landscape Architecture from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum. Jim is a member of ASLA’s Council of Fellows, and recipient of the prestigious ASLA Design Medal. He serves on the US Department of the State Industry Advisory Group and the Board of Directors of the Landscape Architecture Foundation.

Tei Carpenter

Tei Carpenter is founder and director of Agency—Agency, a New York City based architectural design practice. Trained in philosophy and architecture, she specializes in cultural, residential, and public installation projects. Tei Carpenter / Agency—Agency has been honored as a winner of the League Prize by the Architectural League of New York, the 2018 New Practices New York by the American Institute of Architects, and included in Domus Magazine’s list of the Best 100 Architecture Firms. The studio’s work has been featured in publications including PIN-UP, Cultured and Fast Company. She is a Critic at the Yale School of Architecture.

Sekou Cooke

Sekou Cooke is an architect, urban designer, researcher, and curator. Born in Jamaica and based in Charlotte, North Carolina, he is the Director of the Master of Urban Design program at UNC Charlotte, the 2021/2022 Nasir Jones HipHop Fellow at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, and a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective.

In his architectural practice, the work of sekou cooke STUDIO is centered on the exploration of Hip-Hop Architecture: an approach to contemporary design that embraces hip-hop culture and applies its shape, structure, and ideologies to the built environment. The studio has received widespread recognition for its design work including ​​a 2022 Emerging Voices award from The Architectural League of New York.

Felecia Davis

Felecia Davis’ work in computational textiles questions how we live and she re-imagines how we might use textiles in our daily lives and in architecture. Davis is interested in developing computational methods and design in relation to specific bodies in specific places engaging specific social, cultural and political constructions. Davis is an Associate Professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing in the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University and is the director of SOFTLAB@PSU. She completed her PhD in Design Computation at MIT. Davis’ work in architecture connects art, science, engineering and design and was featured by PBS in the Women in Science Profiles series. Davis’ work was part of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Reconstruction: Blackness and Architecture in America. She is a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective a not-for-profit group of Black architects, scholars and artists supporting design work about the Black diaspora. Davis is also principal in her own design firm, FELECIADAVISTUDIO, which has recently been awarded an 2022 Emerging Voices Award from the New York Architectural League.

Gabriela Etchegaray

Gabriela Etchegaray is an architect, curator and researcher, based in Mexico City and New York. Her work is developed through projects design, installations, exhibitions and curatorial proposals. Her research focuses on art, geography, and architecture through drawings, maps, texts, documents, and buildings.

She is co-founder of AMBROSI ETCHEGARAY, an architecture studio together with Jorge Ambrosi. Etchegaray has been invited to national and international architecture schools as a critic and lecturer; she is an Associate Professor at Columbia GSAPP, in NY. Through her work, she explores the intersections between social values, space, nature, gender, material and immaterial explorations.

Ron Stelmarski

Ron has spent the past twenty years with Perkins&Will relentlessly advancing the cause of design, ten in Chicago and the most recent ten in Dallas. His work is recognized for navigating complex programs, unique sites, tight budgets, and challenging schedules while producing award-winning designs that elevate the public realm and galvanize communities with architecture of enduring aesthetic, environmental, and social value.

Under his design leadership the Dallas studio has received over four dozen national, state, and local design awards and has grown to be the largest of all Perkins&Will studios. His multi-faceted approach spans disciplines at all scales, including architecture, interiors, brand experience and urban design. Ron has led projects regionally and around the world, including Tianjin, China, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Recent projects exhibiting his typological range include The Pittman Hotel, the Baylor Scott & White Health Administrative Center, Lubbock City Hall, El Paso Eastside Recreation Center, CoverMyMeds Headquarters, and the Fair Park Master Plan Update. He participated in the 2020 Venice Biennale exhibit, Watershed Urbanism, speculating on new ways of living with the land.

Ron believes that architecture is the connective tissue that unites people, place, and culture – a philosophy that informs every project he undertakes. He holds an M.Arch degree from Yale University and a B.Arch from the University of Cincinnati.

Aaron Seward

Aaron Seward is Editor-in-Chief of The Architect’s Newspaper. Seward is an award-winning editor whose career has centered on interpreting architecture for the profession and the general public. He was editor of Texas Architect magazine for six years and prior to that held several positions at AN, including executive editor. In addition to those publications, Seward’s writing on architecture, culture, and the built environment has appeared in Architect, Curbed, Domus, Metropolis, and other publications. He has a BA in Literature, Writing and the Arts from The New School for Social Research.

Jack Murphy

Executive Editor

The Architect’s Newspaper

Jack Murphy is Executive Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. Previously he was Editor of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston and an adjunct professor at the University of Houston. His writing has appeared in Architectural Record, Dwell, The Architect’s Newspaper, Texas Architect, Places, Cite, PLAT, Paprika!, the SF Gate, the Houston Chronicle, and the New York Review of Architecture, among other publications. He received an Honorable Mention for the Pierre Vago Journalism Award 2020 from the International Committee of Architecture Critics. He earned degrees in architecture from MIT and Rice University and contributed to award-winning architectural practices in Texas, New York, and Massachusetts.