MVRDV is a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based architecture and urban design practice founded in 1993, with additional offices in Berlin, New York, Paris, and Shanghai. It is currently regarded as one of the world's finest architecture firms. MVRDV is an acronym of the founding members' surnames: Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries.
Victor Josef Papanek (22 November 1923 – 10 January 1998) was an Austrian-born American designer and educator, who became a strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products, tools, and community infrastructures. His book Design for the Real World, originally published in 1971 and translated into more than 24 languages, had lasting international impact.
Michael David Sorkin was an American architectural and urban critic, designer, and educator. He was considered to be "one of architecture's most outspoken public intellectuals", a polemical voice in contemporary culture and the design of urban places at the turn of the twenty-first century. Sorkin first rose to prominence as an architectural critic for the Village Voice in New York City, a post which he held for a decade throughout the 1980s. In the ensuing years, he taught at prominent universities around the world, practiced through his eponymous firm, established a nonprofit book press, and directed the urban design program at the City College of New York. He died at age 71 from complications brought on by COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vicente Guallart is a Spanish architect, urban planner, and researcher. He is one of the worldwide experts in Ecological Urban Development and Digital Cities with high expertise in Strategic Planning, Master Plan Development, Transport Oriented Development, Project Management, and Building and Landscape Design.
The Fab Tree Hab is a hypothetical ecological home design developed at MIT in the early 2000s by Mitchell Joachim, Javier Arbona and Lara Greden. With the idea of easing the burden humanity places on the environment with conventional housing by growing "living, breathing" tree homes.
Carlo Ratti is an Italian architect, engineer, educator and author. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he directs the MIT Senseable City Lab, a research group that explores how new technologies are changing the way we understand, design and ultimately live in cities. Ratti is also a founding partner of the international design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, which has offices in Turin, New York and London. He is also a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and an Honorary Professor at TTPU Tashkent. Ratti was named one of the "50 most influential designers in America" by Fast Company and highlighted in Wired magazine's "Smart List: 50 people who will change the world".
UrbanLab is an American architecture and urban design firm with headquarters in Chicago. Founded by Martin Felsen, FAIA, and Sarah Dunn in 2001, the office is known for its focus on sustainability, creative experimentation and a collaborative approach to buildings, spaces and cities.
Kent Larson is an architect and principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Larson is currently director of the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-director with Lord Norman Foster of the Norman Foster Institute on Sustainable Cities based in Madrid. His research is focused on urban design, modeling and simulation, compact transformable housing, and ultralight autonomous mobility on demand. He has established an international consortium of City Science Network labs, and is a founder of multiple MIT Media Lab spin-off companies, including Ori Living and L3cities.
Ecological design or ecodesign is an approach to designing products and services that gives special consideration to the environmental impacts of a product over its entire lifecycle. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan define it as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design can also be defined as the process of integrating environmental considerations into design and development with the aim of reducing environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.
The CityCar or MIT CityCar is an urban all-electric concept car designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. The project was conceived by William J. Mitchell and his Smart Cities Research Group. It is now led by Kent Larson, Director of the Changing Places Research Group at the Media Lab. The project came into reality in 2003 under the support of General Motors. Time magazine choose the CityCar to be one of the "Best Inventions of 2007".
William John Mitchell was an Australian-born author, educator, architect and urban designer, best known for leading the integration of architectural and related design arts practice with computing and other technologies.
Galen Cranz is a Professor of the Graduate School, Architecture at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the social and cultural bases of architectural and urban design. She is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, a kinesthetic educational system, who founded the new field "Body Conscious Design."
Kongjian Yu, is a landscape architect and urbanist, writer and educator, commonly credited with the invention of Sponge City concept, and winner of the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2020. Received his Doctor of Design Degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995, Doctor Honoris Causa from Sapienza University of Rome in 2017 and Honorary Doctorate from Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019, Yu was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Terreform ONE is a 501c3 non-profit architecture and urban think tank that advances ecological design in derelict municipal areas. By formulating unsolicited feasibility studies and egalitarian designs, their mission is to illustrate speculative environmental plans for New York City and other cities worldwide. Their intention is to support community outreach and master plan solutions in underprivileged areas that do not have direct access to qualified architects and urban designers.
Peder Anker is a historian of environmental sciences, specializing in the history of ecology and ecological architecture and design. Anker is currently a Professor of History of Science at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Anker has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Dibner Institute and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and been a visiting scholar at both Columbia University and University of Oslo.
Martin Felsen is an American architect and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA). He directs UrbanLab, a Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm. Felsen's projects range in scale from houses such as the Hennepin, Illinois Residence, mixed-use residential and commercial buildings such as Upton's Naturals Headquarters, public open spaces such as the Smart Museum of Art Courtyard at the University of Chicago, and large scale, urban design projects such as Growing Water in Chicago and a masterplan for the Yangming Lake region of Changde, China. Felsen was awarded the 2009 Latrobe Prize by the American Institute of Architects, College of Fellows.
Jonathan Frederick Phinneas Rose is an American urban planner and real estate developer. Through his corporation Jonathan Rose Companies, he is known for developing communities that are considered affordable and environmentally-responsible. Apart from his involvement in various aspects of property, Rose has founded Gramavision Records, a jazz and New Music label. Rose has written several books including The Well Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations and Human Behavior Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life.
Richard Bender was an American architect and urban planner with extensive experience in urban, campus and community design. He also served as dean emeritus and professor of architecture at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley. Bender has also taught at The Cooper Union, Columbia University, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Swiss Federal Technical University, and the Instituto Universitario Arquitettura in Venice.
Karla Maria S. Rothstein is an American architect and adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is also the founder and director of Columbia University's trans-disciplinary DeathLAB Rothstein is also the co-founder of Latent Productions, an architecture, research, and development firm in New York City, which she co-founded in 1999 with Salvatore Perry. A significant focus of her architecture practice, research, and teaching has been redefining urban spaces of death and remembrance.
Winka Dubbeldam is a Dutch architectural designer and academic. After her education in architectural design at Columbia University, she established her own firm, Archi-Tectonics, in 1994 in New York City. Her use of a combination of sustainable materials, innovative and inventive building methods with adoption of digital techniques has rewarded her with many accolades for her architectural projects. She has earned a reputation as a leading figure in modern architectural designs which has also made her "a real estate newsmaker". She is a Professor and Chair of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the RIBA External Examiner for the Bartlett UCL London [2018-2022], the Creative Director for the Venice Biennale Virtual Italian Pavillion [2021]. Her Ted talk “Crowdfunding Urban Planning” was in TED Global in Edinburgh Scotland 2013.
