Lectures

EN/ Përparim Rama was born in Prishtina on January 20, 1976. His father, Kadrush Rama was a well-known Albanian painter, and his mother Nazmije Rama worked as an educator.  In 1992, when he was only 16 years old, Përparim Rama moved to Great Britain, and was granted asylum due to the aggravated political situation in his homeland.  He completed his undergraduate studies in architecture at London South Bank University from 1995 to 1998. From 2001 to 2003 he continued the second part of his studies at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Having completed his Bachelor studies, he pursued a Master DipArch degree at the University of East London….

EN/ Joni Baboci is an architect, planner and all-around urban enthusiast. He is the founder of Layer (https://getlayer.xyz), a spatial orchestration platform with global data coverage which empowers teams to govern through tactics and patterns while leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence. He has previously served as the General Director of Planning and Urban Development for the City of Tirana and the director of Atelier Albania, a structure of the Albanian government dealing with national and regional strategic planning; Joni has executed planning, design & development projects at different scales at the national, regional and local levels. He consults on urbanism and…

EN/ Since 1999 raumlaborberlin works in various interdisciplinary teams on urban design, architecture, experimental building and research. Today’s partners are Francesco Apuzzo, Markus Bader, Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, Frauke Gerstenberg, Andrea Hofmann, Jan Liesegang, Christof Mayer, Florian Stirnemann, Axel Timm. Jan Liesegang was born in Cologne 1968, he studied Architecture in Berlin, Copenhagen and at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, New York. After graduating in Berlin he worked for 3 years as project architect for Sauerbruch Hutton Architects, Berlin. In 1999 he co-founded raumlaborberlin. Today raumlabor works worldwide on contemporary architecture, urbanism, art and research. From 2001-07 he has been teaching architecture and urban planning…

EN/ Architect, critic, curator, full professor of Theory and Architectural Design at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. Editorial director of Platform Architecture and Design magazine, he collaborates as an independent author with Italian and foreign newspapers and magazines, including Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, L’Espresso, Domani, Domus, Lotus. From 1995 to 2019 he was editorial manager of the Architecture and Design for Skira publishing. He currently collaborates for Architecture and special projects with the Marsilio Group. In October 2020 Luca Molinari has been appointed scientific director of M9 Museum. In 2014 he founded his own firm Luca Molinari Studio…

EN/ Hussam Dakkak is an architect based in London. He is a partner at Studio Bound and has served as the program director of the AA Jeddah Visiting School since 2015. Hussam is an ARB registered architect holding a master’s in architecture from the Architectural Association in London. Hussam currently serves as a design and development lead for Rassmal. Hussam also serves as a consultant on a number of cultural and architectural projects with PIF and sits on the advisory board for the Royal Commission of Makkah. Hussam has lectured at LSE, Harvard University, the AA and continues his research…

En/ Trained as art and architecture historian at University of Augsburg he received a research fellowship 1986-1989 at Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institut) in Rome for his dissertation about Architecture Models in the Renaissance. In 1994 he started as curatorial assistant at Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, from 1996 to 2007 working as curator and head of architecture collection of Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. From 2007 to 2010 he worked as Curator at the Architecture and Design Department of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2011/12 he was Loeb-Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Since 2012 he is Professor for…

EN/ Niko McGlashan is a researcher and educator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, within the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism in the School of Architecture and Planning. At the Center, he designs and develops toolkits for architects, planners, and designers to leverage data and computation in novel ways. His research crosses a myriad of scales and mediums; be it physical or ‘phygital’ architecture, real-time GIS through web design, digital fabrication, and a suite of UX/UI applications. For his Master of Architecture thesis at the University of Toronto, Niko designed a multiplayer video game that reflected on the often overlooked intersection…

EN/ Project Leader and Architect, Leo Stuckardt (DE), coordinates MVRDV Next, an in-house R&D group he co-founded in 2017, that focuses on experimental technologies, computational workflows, and new forms of narrative. Orchestrating collaborations with MVRDV’s design studios and developing data-driven, parametric design workflows, he helps teams to implement new design methodologies in their work, to enhance design capabilities, reducing cost, enhancing sustainability, as well as the future impact of MVRDV’s work.  With his fascination for emerging tools, software, and new media, Stuckardt – a cinefile, and musician – contributes to architectural projects from Beijing, to Mumbia, and to Amsterdam, but…

EN/ Associate Kristina Knauf co-leads MVRDV’s climate group and is involved in the sustainability aspects in all of MVRDV’s projects. Before, she shaped MVRDV project processes for the Urban Studio from early acquisition stages to delivery, driving storyline, design, and the internal coordination of project development through different design phases. With a particular dedication to urbanism and resilience, Knauf champions the development of innovative methods, tools, and products that help to future-proof MVRDV’s office vision. Knauf has been integral to creating projects that provide new perspectives for future living on a larger scale, including assisting Founding Partner, Winy Maas, in…

EN/ Frani O’Toole (b. Chicago) works in communications for an architecture and urban planning firm building social infrastructure near the US-Mexico border. Frani studied Art History and English at Yale University before moving to Ireland on a Fulbright fellowship for her Master’s in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail. Now in-between writing and architecture, she’s working to see the built environment be defined more by universal design.  About the lecture “There is nothing wrong with making things people want. It’s just that too little attention is being paid to the things people…