Meet the Speakers

Perry Kulper

Perry Kulper is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. He was a SCI-Arc faculty member for 17 years and held visiting teaching positions at Penn and ASU during that time. After graduate studies at Columbia University, he worked in the offices of Eisenman/ Robertson, Robert A.M. Stern and Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown before moving to Los Angeles. His interests include: the generative potential of architectural drawing; the spatial opportunities offered by using diverse design methods in design practices; and in broadening the conceptual range by which architecture contributes to our cultural imagination. He was the Sir Banister Fletcher Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 2018-19. In 2013 he published Pamphlet Architecture 34, ‘Fathoming the Unfathomable: Archival Ghosts and Paradoxical Shadows’ with friend and collaborator Nat Chard. They are at work on a new book to be published by UCL Press. Recently he ventured into the digital world, to get a handle on ‘cut + paste’ operations in Photoshop as a result he has encountered one of his steeper learning curves. More recently he has been snooping around under the hood of said digital realms. Fantastic beasts have also been on his mind.


Ron Purser

Ron Purser, Ph.D. is the Lam Larsen Distinguished Research Professor of Management at San Francisco State University. He is the author of eight books, including McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (Penguin Random House/Repeater Books), the Handbook of the Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness and the Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context and Social Engagement. He writes for such media outlets as Tricycle, The Guardian, Salon, Alternet, Tikkun, Pando Daily and Transformation. He is also the host of The Mindful Cranks podcast.


Andrew King:

Andrew King is Chief Design Officer at Lemay and leads FLDWRK, Lemay’s research and design collective. A Prix de Rome laureate, Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Professor in Practice at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University, he is a recognized leader in Canadian design practice, education and excellence. Responsible for the firm’s design leadership and relevant national strategic initiatives, he has evolved a critically recognized practice model that converges speculative practice, creative thinking and


Louis Komjathy:

Louis Komjathy 康思奇 (“Dr. K.”; Ph.D., Religious Studies; Boston University) is a leading independent scholar-educator and translator. He is founding Director and Distinguished Professor of Unlearning at The Underground University (TUU). He researches and has published extensively in Contemplative Studies, Daoist Studies, and Religious Studies, following specific interests in contemplative practice, embodiment, and mystical experience. In addition to over thirty academic articles and book chapters, Dr. Komjathy has published nine books to date. These include the more recent Taming the Wild Horse: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Daoist Horse Taming Pictures (Columbia University Press, 2017), the first book to fuse Animal Studies, Contemplative Studies, Daoist Studies, and Religious Studies, and Introducing Contemplative Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), the first and only book-length introduction to the emerging interdisciplinary field. His current work explores cross-cultural practices and perennial questions related to aliveness, extraordinariness, flourishing, transmutation, and trans-temporality. He lives in semi-seclusion on the Northshore of Chicago, Illinois.


Roger William Connah

Roger William Connah, lives in Ruthin, North Wales, UK. He is currently Associate Professor, Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, Carleton University (Ottawa), Visiting Professor, School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology (Guangzhou, China), and International Chair (2017-2019) Sushant School of Art and Architecture (Gurgaon, India). Responsible for a series of publications, exhibitions, films carried out over 4 decades in Finland, Sweden, India, Pakistan, Italy, USA, UK, and Canada, he has published over 20 books on architecture, art, material culture, cinema and society, including: Writing Architecture, MIT Press (1989), Being: An Architect Ian Ritchie (with Roger Connah) Royal Academy London (2014); Finland: Modern Architecture in History (Reaktion Press 2005); Aaltomania (2001), How Architecture Got its Hump (MIT 2000); Welcome to the Hotel Architecture (MIT 1999); Architectures of Thought (2021); Heron-Mazy Studio (Connah-Maruszczak founded 2001) architectural studio for alternative projects: Chromopolis (2002), Revenge on the Lawn White House Redux, Storefront 1st Prize (2008); Kite Running Architecture (Bengaluru 2015); Architects can’t be Existentialists (2012); Nexus: Designing Disruption and Celebration(Ahmedabad with NID 1986), Shelter (Delhi 1987); Satish Gujral Retrospective (Delhi 1988), amongst others.

Vibhuti Sachdev:

Dr. Vibhuti Sachdev is Dean at SSAA and Director, Architecture, Planning, and Design Schools, Sushant University. She qualified as architect in 1989 from SPA, Delhi, completed her Phd in 1996 from University of London, and has worked as a conservation consultant, writer, and designer. She has taught at the University of Sussex, and written four books and several articles on the subjects of Jaipur, traditional knowledge systems, Indian cities, and Indian modernities. She has worked and written extensively on the city of Jaipur, focusing on its planning, architecture, and craft traditions. Since publishing these books, Dr Sachdev has been a consultant on the restoration of the Jal Mahal in Jaipur, was the design curator for the artwork of its pavilions, and the co-curator of the exhibition ‘Painted Pleasures’. Her latest book is on the Festivals at the Jaipur Court. At Sushant University, she has introduced new programmes, various reforms, and innovations in teaching and learning systems in the fields of Architecture, Planning, and Design at the undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels.

Beate Söntgen

Beate Söntgen is Professor of Art History and was Vice President of Research and Humanities in the Presidential Committee (2012–2019) at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She heads the research training group Cultures of Critique as well as, together with Susanne Leeb, the research program PriMus – PhD in Museums. She held a professorship in Art History at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2003–2011), where she directed, together with Ulrike Groos, the postgraduate program Art Criticism and Curatorial Knowledge, and was Laurenz Professor for Contemporary Art at the University of Basel, Switzerland (2002–2003). She is member of the advisory board of Texte zur Kunst and of the Board of trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation. Publications include books on modern and contemporary art, art theory and criticism

Peter Scriver

Peter Scriver is a founding member of the Centre for Asian and Middle-Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide, where he has taught Modern Architectural History, Theory and Design and directed postgraduate research since 1996. Scriver is a critical authority on the architectural history of modern India. His theoretical interests focus on cultural and cognitive relationships between architecture, building, planning and urban design, and the institutional frameworks and professional networks in which these disciplines operate. In addition to his pioneering work on postcolonial India, Scriver is also an expert on colonial modernity. His extensive historical research on the British Indian Department of Public Works has examined its instrumental role in the propagation and institutionalization of modern architectural and engineering knowledge in colonial India and beyond. His on-going work on transnational professional networks and exchanges of architectural knowledge and expertise -- between Australia and Asia in particular -- continues to contribute to critical scholarship on colonial and modern architectural history, and the broader cultural, institutional and political-economic frameworks of its production.

Dr. Katarina Bonnevier

Dr. Katarina Bonnevier is an architect, artist and researcher. In her practice of building design, art installations, performances, work-shops, lecturing and writing she explores and transforms the built environment from feminist, queer and intersectional perspectives.

Recent work includes set and costume design for Unga Klara (2012), urban performance at Reykjavik Arts Festival (2012). A founding member of the art collaborative MYCKET, she is a researcher at Swedish Museum of Architecture and a visiting professor at University College of Arts Craft and Design (Konstfack), was a lecturer and researcher at School of Architecture (KTH), Stockholm (2001-2011), visiting professor at Haute Ecole Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (2010).



Gregory Burgess

Since 1972 Gregory Burgess has been the principal designer for Gregory Burgess Architects, with an emphasis on architecture as a social, healing and ecological art. His international reputation has been established through a body of work including housing, community, cultural (including indigenous), educational, health, religious, commercial, exhibition design and urban design projects. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the national Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Buildings, the Victorian Architecture Medal for the best building of the year, the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal for distinguished service by an Australian architect, Robert Mathew Award for outstanding contributions to the development of architecture in the Commonwealth, and the international Kenneth F Brown Asia Pacific Culture and Architectural Design Award. He has taught and lectured at many Australian and international universities and his work has been exhibited at major galleries and museums locally and in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Shanghai, Bombay, Edinburgh, the Middle East, and America. It has been widely published in books and journals, including most major international architectural journals.”

Linda-Ruth Salter

Linda-Ruth Salter is the co-author of Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture (MIT Press, 2006), a cross-disciplinary exploration of the nexus of the sonic signal, the physical container of that signal, and the human being who perceives and processes that signal to provide meaning. Her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences with a minor in Japanese cultural history has continued to inform her wide-ranging research and teaching. Focusing on the neuropsychology of hearing and the psycho-socio-cultural contexts within which meaning is achieved, she has explored such diverse topics as sacred sound and sacred space, the enticing nature of loud sounds, and the missing role of sound in spatial design. Recent publications include: “What you Hear is Where You Are” in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination, Vol 1 (2019), and “Developing a Cognitive Heuristic Model of Sound Art” in The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art (2017). She is also an accomplished Asian brush painter, specializing in Sumi-e and classical Chinese landscape painting. Bridging the worlds of art and social science, Eastern thought and Western ideas, she has maintained a consistent vision, developing insights and structures that support human thriving.

Neil Spiller

Neil Spiller is Editor of Architectural Design, Visiting Professor of Architecture, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada (2020-2) and Visiting Professor IAUV Venice (2021) and recently Hawksmoor Chair of Architecture and Landscape and Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, London prior to this he was Dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction and Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory at Greenwich University. Before this he was Vice-Dean and Graduate Director of Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

He guest edited his first AD, Architects in Cyberspace in 1995 (with Martin Pearce) followed in 1996 by Integrating Architecture (1996), Architects in Cyberspace II (1998), Young Blood (2000), Reflexive Architecture (2002), Protocell Architecture with Rachel Armstrong (2010) and Drawing Architecture (2013). Neil's numerous books include Cyberreader: Critical Writings of the Digital Era (2002), Digital Dreams - The Architecture of the New Alchemic Technologies (1998) Visionary Architecture - Blueprints of the Modern Imagination (2006), Architecture and Surrealism (2016). His architectural design work has been published and exhibited on many occasions worldwide. Since 1998, he has produced the epic COMMUNICATING VESSELS project. In 2020 his book How to Thrive in Architecture School- A Student Guide was published by the RIBA.

Hannes Stiefel

Hannes Stiefel is an architect based in Vienna, Austria. Stiefel & Company Architects conceive, design and realize buildings, terrains, structures and processes that reflect, convert, and mediate the dynamic interplay of those natural and human forces that shape the constructions of the crust of the earth. And they co-construct their poetic conditions. Since 2013 Hannes is a professor of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he directs the platform Ecology, Sustainability and Cultural Heritage (ESC) at the Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA).

Anupama Kundoo

Anupama Kundoo’s internationally recognised and award-winning architecture practice that started in 1990, demonstrates a strong focus on material research and experimentation towards an architecture that has a low environmental impact and is appropriate to the socio-economic context. Kundoo has built extensively in India and has had the experience of working, researching and teaching in a variety of cultural contexts across the world: TU Berlin, AA School of Architecture London, Parsons New School of Design New York, University of Queensland Brisbane, IUAV Venice and ETSAB Barcelona. She is currently Professor at UCJC Madrid where she is Chair of ‘Affordable Habitat.’ She is also the Strauch Visiting Critic at Cornell University.

Kundoo’s work extend to urban design and planning projects, with her background in rapid urbanisation related development issues, about which she has written extensively. She taught urban management at the TU Berlin and recently proposed her strategies for a future city for Africa, as part of the Milan Triennale 2014. She is the author of Roger Anger: Research on Beauty/Recherche sur la Beauté, Architecture 1958-2008 published in Berlin by Jovis Verlag in 2009. Her latest publication is a book chapter ‘Rethinking affordability in economic and environmental terms in the Routledge book Inclusive Urbanisation: Rethinking Policy, Practice and Research in the Age of Climate Change, 2015. In 2013 Kundoo received an honourable mention in the ArcVision International Prize for Women in Architecture for ‘her dedication when approaching the problem of affordability of construction and sustainability in all aspects’. Most recently she was awarded RIBA Charles Jencks Award 2021, Auguste Perret Prize 2021 for architectural technology for her innovative use of local building techniques, material sourcing and construction principles, all the while being acutely responsive to the environment, climate and culture.” Her most recent Exhibition: ANUPAMA KUNDOO: TAKING TIME was exhibited in LOUISIANA Museum of Modern Art, Denmark from 8 Oct 2020 to 16 May 2021

Vikramaditya Prakash

Professor


Dr. Vikramaditya “Vikram” Prakash is an architect, architectural historian and theorist. He is Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington with adjunct appointments in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design and Planning. He received his B. Arch. from Chandigarh College of Architecture, India and his M.A. and PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University.

Vikram works on issues of modernism, postcoloniality, global history and fashion & architecture. His books include Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India, A Global History of Architecture (with Francis DK Ching & Mark Jarzombek), Colonial Modernities (co-edited with Peter Scriver), The Architecture of Shivdatt Sharma and Chandigarh: An Architectural Guide. A Global History is widely used as a textbook and being translated into five languages. His next book, One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash, is due in summer 2020.



Gisle Lokken

Gisle Løkken, is lecturer, PhD fellow, and architect, 70°N arkitektur in Tromsø, Northern Norway. Along with his partner Magdalena Haggärde, Løkken has developed experimental and critical approaches to architecture and planning – in an Arctic context, but also concerning general perspectives on consumption of natural landscapes and resources, urban development and modernity, in the light of severe global changes. The work combines various trans disciplinary methods inspired by anthropology, philosophy, architecture and artistic approaches, and is based on a comprehensive ‘ecosophy’ understood as social ecology, mental ecology and environmental ecology. The approach encompasses issues of complexity, multiplicity, vulnerability, contingency and indeterminacy – where investigations and proposals are centred on notions of openness and planning for an unknown future. The work is constantly evolving and is tested, developed and processed through commissions, competitions, teaching, academic work and publications.


Magdalena Haggärde

Magdalena Haggärde, is an architect and lecturer, 70°N arkitektur in Tromsø, Northern Norway. Magdalena Haggärde & her partner at 70°N arkitektur, Gisle Løkken have developed experimental and critical approaches to architecture and planning – in an Arctic context, but also concerning general perspectives on consumption of natural landscapes and resources, urban development and modernity, in the light of severe global changes. The work combines various trans disciplinary methods inspired by anthropology, philosophy, architecture and artistic approaches, and is based on a comprehensive ‘ecosophy’ understood as social ecology, mental ecology and environmental ecology. The approach encompasses issues of complexity, multiplicity, vulnerability, contingency and indeterminacy – where investigations and proposals are centred on notions of openness and planning for an unknown future. The work is constantly evolving and is tested, developed and processed through commissions, competitions, teaching, academic work and publications.