SPEAKERS
Experts who specialize in creating products and systems that bridge the gap between humans and animals and are focused on developing technologies and interfaces that allow humans to communicate and interact with other species in meaningful ways.
ALEX BRAIDWOOD
Alex Braidwood is a sound artist, media designer, and educator who maintains a practice exploring issues of sustainability at the intersection of art and science. He has exhibited art, led workshops, lectured on his work, and performed live at a variety of events and venues throughout the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He has been an artist in residence in an Australian mountain village, on an Iowa farm, at a mid-western biological field research station, and on Isle Royale National Park. Alex is Director of the Artist-in-Residence program at Iowa Lakeside Lab field research station as well as Director of Graphic Design Graduate Education and faculty in the Human Computer Interaction program at Iowa State University. He is Artistic Director and Graphic Designer for Group Creatives, a Des Moines-based organization helping midwest cities develop and implement public art master plans. He also serves as Secretary for the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) board of directors, the MSAE representative on the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and President of the World Listening Project

Website: https://alexbraidwood.com/

ERIN MOORE

Erin E. Moore is an architect who uses her design research practice FLOAT architecture research and design to explore and advance thought on ideas of nature in architectural design. She works with explicit intentions for material, ecological, and multi-species life cycles. Recent work addresses the architectural space of fossil fuel consumption, biogenic carbon sequestration, and climate change in the context of new materialisms, critical spatial practice, speculative design, and the environmental humanities.

Erin E. Moore, AIA is a Professor in the Department of Architecture and in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon. She is a graduate of Smith College (BA) and University of California-Berkeley (MArch).

Website: http://floatwork.com/

ADRIAN PARR
Adrian Parr, PhD, is an internationally recognized environmental, political, and cultural thinker and advocate, author, and filmmaker. The new dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, she is also a Senior Fellow at the Design Futures Council. Prior to joining the UO, she served as the dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington, and as the director of the Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.

Adrian is a transdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of architecture criticism, aesthetics, political theory, and environmental studies. She’s authored eight books, the latest three of which focused on environmental politics and sustainability culture, and she has served as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) water chair for eight years.

The driving force behind her work is the question of how to overcome ecological and economic scarcity. She asserts that environmental devastation and climate change are crimes against humanity. Her 2016 documentary, “The Intimate Realities of Water,” won more than a dozen awards, including Best Documentary at the 2016 United International Independent Film Festival.

Website: https://adrian-parr.com/

YUSSEF AGBO-OLA

Yussef Agbo-Ola is the founder and creative director at Olaniyi Studio based in London. Agbo-Ola’s multidisciplinary architectural and artistic practice is focused on interpreting natural energy systems, through interactive experiments that explore the connections between an array of sensory environments, from the biological and anthropological, to the perceptual and microscopic. His aim is to use diverse multidisciplinary research methods and design components, to reinterpret local knowledge and its environmental importance cross-culturally. His research outcomes manifest through architectural pavilions, photographic journalism, material alchemy, interactive performance, experimental sound design, and conceptual writing.

Agbo-Ola holds a Masters in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London, and a Masters in Architecture from the Royal College of Art. He has led art and architectural commissions for the United Nations, Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Serpentine Gallery London, TEDx East End, BBC Arts, Venice Architectural Biennials, Sharjah Architecture Triennial,  Palais de Tokyo, Arts Catalyst, and Lexus Automotive Innovation Centre Japan, among others.

Website: http://yussefagbo-ola.com/

SARAH GUNAWAN
Sarah Gunawan is an architectural designer, currently practicing in Los Angeles, California and Ontario, Canada. Her independent work and teaching explores the overlaps between misfitting human bodies, multi-species entanglements and ecologies of our built environment, all in an effort to stay with the trouble. She was the Peter Reyner Banham Fellow 2017-18 at the University at Buffalo and has taught at the University of Waterloo and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Sarah Gunawan holds a bachelor’s degree and a Master of Architecture from the University of Waterloo and has worked at architectural practices in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

Website: https://sarahgunawan.com/

CHRIS CORNELIUS

Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. He is the founding principal of studio:indigenous, a design practice serving Indigenous clients.

He served as a cultural consultant and design collaborator with Antoine Predock on the Indian Community School of Milwaukee (ICS). ICS won the AIA Design Excellence award from the Committee on Architecture for Education. Cornelius holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Cornelius was the Spring 2021, Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University. He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Virginia.

Chris is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Including the inaugural Miller Prize from Exhibit Columbus, a 2018 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award, and an Artist residency from the National Museum of the American Indian. Chris has been exhibited widely including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Studio:indigenous received a 2021 Architect’s Newspaper Best Of Practice Award – Best Small Practice, Midwest.

Chris lives and works on the ancestral lands of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee people where Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.

Website: https://www.studioindigenous.com/

JOYCE HWANG
Joyce Hwang is associate professor and director of graduate studies in architecture at the University at Buffalo, and founder of Ants of the Prairie.

Hwang is a recipient of the Exhibit Columbus University Research Design Fellowship (2020-21), the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award (2014), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2013), a New York State Council on the Arts Independent Project Grant (2013, 2008), and a MacDowell Fellowship (2016, 2011).

Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Matadero Madrid, Venice Architecture Biennale, and Rotterdam International Architecture Biennale. Hwang is on the steering committee for US Architects Declare, and serves as a core organizer for Dark Matter University and on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education. Hwang has practiced professionally in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Barcelona.

Websites: https://www.antsoftheprairie.com/ ,  https://linktr.ee/jo.hwang

 

MEGAN HAYES

Megan Hayes (she/her) is an Australian researcher, writer, and artist currently based on Kalapuya lands where she is a PhD candidate in the University of Oregon’s Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy program. Her research interests criss-cross science studies, the blue humanities, and artistic research; fields informed by undergraduate studies in Photography and Situated Media at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a Research Master’s in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam. Megan’s PhD project, How to Love an Oyster: Chemistry, Sensibility, and Attachment, studies oyster-human relationships and the worlds those relations sustain.