Chatter: Architecture Talks Back

Mar Santamaría and Pablo Martínez operate 300.000 Km/s, a professional firm based in Barcelona that provides data analysis and consulting on cities. They apply technology to architecture, cities and land, searching for new ways to transform the environment. They work in the field of urban analysis, cartography, urban planning, digital tool development, and digital humanities. Their knowledge stems from architecture, urbanism, geographic data analysis, urban history, restoration, museology, industrial design, project management and software development. They provide data analysis services and data products to help cities make better decisions based on data. They have collaborated successfully with public entities, international companies, and cultural institutions.

Christopher Baker is an artist whose work engages the rich collection of social, technological and ideological networks present in the urban landscape. He creates artifacts and situations that reveal and generate relationships within and between these networks. Baker’s award-winning work has been featured extensively online, in print and internationally in festivals, galleries and museums. Since completing a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Media Arts at the University of Minnesota, Baker has held visiting artist positions at Kitchen Budapest, an experimental media lab in Hungary, and Minneapolis college of Art and Design. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art and Technology Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ecosistema Urbano was founded in 2000 in Madrid by architects Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo, and specializes in architecture, public space design, urban consultancy, and urban transformation processes. Their work has developed around the design of public space focusing on the improvement of bioclimatic conditions in contexts and climates as diverse as Norway, Florida or Bahrain. In parallel, Ecosistema Urbano has been developing participatory tools and techniques to involve citizens in the creative and transforming processes of urban environments. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and museums and covered by press around the world, garnering numerous awards. The founding partners have led workshops, lectured, and taught at the most prestigious institutions worldwide, including working as professors at the Harvard Graduate School of Design since 2010.

Chris Grimley is the founder and creative director of SIGNALS. As an author and graphic designer, he has developed books on the legacy of urban renewal, architecture and photography monographs, archival surveys, and exhibition catalogues. The studio has implemented wayfinding and signage for Exhibit Columbus, MASS MoCA, Vassar College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and the iconic Boston City Hall. He has a Master of Architecture degree from the University of British Columbia, and an undergraduate degree in Interior Design. He was a principal at OverUnder, an award-winning architecture and design office founded in 2006.

Sarah Hirschman is a licensed architect and founder of Object Projects. She was formerly an Associate Partner at Envelope A+D and a Project Architect at Rapt Studio. Her practice is invested in creating space for (delightful, surprising, fun, weird, confusing, challenging, new, unfamiliar) things to happen. Sarah teaches in the Architecture Department at the University of California, Berkeley and was the 2017-18 LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University.

Klaus is an architectural cartoonist active since the early 2000s. Focused on the critique of the architectural star system, the revision of the radical visions of the ’60s and ’70s, and the reinterpretation of the icons of architectural history, both within the discipline and the media, his cartoons have been published in magazines such as Architectural Design, Architectural Review, Arq, Arq'a, eVolo, Clog, Conditions, Domus, Harvard Design Magazine, J–A Jornal Arquitectos, MAS Context, STUDIO, The New City Reader, Volume, as well as several books. He has been a regular contributor to German magazine Uncube (“Numerus Klausus,” 2013–2016), A10: New European Architecture (“Interchange,” 2014–2016), and Arquine, where he writes and illustrates his section “ArquiNoir” since 2013. His work has been exhibited in cities such as Naples, Venice, Santiago (Chile), Mexico D.F., and Chicago, among others. In his other life he is also Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana, Associate Professor in the Theory and History of Architecture at the University of Zaragoza, where he teaches and writes about the intersections of architecture, media, and popular culture.

Michael Kubo is Assistant Professor in the History and Theory of Architecture at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston. He was previously the Wyeth Fellow at the Center For Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art and Associate Curator for the US Pavilion at the 2014 International Architecture Biennale in Venice. He is coauthor of numerous books on twentieth-century architecture and urbanism including Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston (2015) and OfficeUS Atlas (2015), and is currently preparing a book on The Architects Collaborative and the authorship of the architectural corporation after 1945.

Neil Donnelly Studio works in graphic design across media with clients in art, architecture, publishing, and public service. The studio has a particular interest in designing flexible structures and systems rooted in conceptual thinking, engaging and surprising readers, users, and visitors through careful consideration of materials, typography, and interactions. Their work has been included in AIGA 50 Books 50 Covers and the Brno Biennial of Graphic Design, and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gwangju Design Biennale, and the New Museum. Neil has lectured, taught courses, and led workshops at Yale University School of Art, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Parsons School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, and the School of Visual Arts. He holds a BS in engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in graphic design from Yale University.

Mark Pasnik is an architect and principal of the multi-disciplinary firm over,under where he has worked on urban, architectural, and design projects in the Middle East, Central America, and throughout the United States. He is a codirector of the pinkcomma gallery, cofounder and curator of the Design Biennial Boston, and coauthor of the book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston published by Monacelli Press in 2015. He serves as chair of the Boston Art Commission.

Project_ is a design and research firm founded in 1998 by Ana Miljački and Lee Moreau. Through the production of buildings, exhibitions, writing, and the instigation of discourse, Project_ strives to critically re-wire histories and futures of architecture. Ana Miljački is currently an assistant professor of architecture at MIT and a co-curator with Eva Franch i Gilabert and Ashley Schafer of the US Pavilion for the 2014 Venice Biennale. Lee Moreau is a registered architect and a principal in the design and innovation firm Continuum.

Luis Urculo is an architect whose work is characterized by the unusual way to portray architecture, using it as a means, more than an end. The output can be illustrations, animations, installations, or interiors. He also works as a teacher with Jaime Hayón for Master of European Design Labs in Instituto Europeo di Design, Madrid.

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. She is the cocurator of 2020–21 Exhibit Columbus and was cocurator of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Curatorial projects include Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen. Zeiger has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Architect. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She is faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and in the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design.

Iker Gil is a founding partner at MAS Studio, editor in chief of the nonprofit MAS Context, and executive director of the SOM Foundation. Iker has edited or coedited several books including Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio and Shanghai Transforming. He has curated multiple exhibitions including Nocturnal Landscapes, Poured Architecture: Sergio Prego on Miguel Fisac, and BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. He was Associate Curator of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and cocurator of Exhibit Columbus 2020–2021. He was the 2024 Morgenstern Visiting Chairs at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and the Escola da Cidade (São Paulo).