Speakers

Claudio Acioly Jr., UNHRP, Nairobi
Arthur Adeya, KDI, Nairobi
Gabriel Duarte, PUC University, Rio de Janeiro
Alejandro Echeverri, URBAM, Eafit, Medellin
Flavio Janches, University of Buenos Aires
Haris Piplas, ETH Zürich, Caracas
Anuradha Mathur, University of Pennsylvania
Fernando de Mello Franco, MMBB, São Paulo
Phillip Thompson, MIT Cambridge

Curricula Vitae

Claudio Acioly is chief Housing Policy Section of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and coordinator of the United Nations Housing Rights Programme jointly implemented with the Office of UN High Commissioner of Human Rights. He has 27 years of experience and has worked in more than 20 countries as practitioner, technical advisor, development consultant and training and capacity building expert in the field of housing, slum upgrading and urban management and development.  He is the author of books and articles dealing with informal settlements and slum upgrading, urban densities and participatory urban management.  He has lectured extensively on these themes and worked as consultant to the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), UN-HABITAT and bilateral organizations. E-mail: Claudio.Acioly(at)unhabitat.org

Arthur Adeya is Co-founder of the Kounkuey Design Initiative, lecturer at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology dept of Landscape Architecture and a Partner at Lexicon + Ion Planning in Nairobi, Kenya.  He combines his teaching and private practice with work for KDI with specific emphasis on collaborating with diverse stakeholders residents, design students and professionals, private sector experts and government officials-to enable low-income communities to implement sustainable, quality-of-life enhancing, design interventions.  Arthur is currently the local liaison for the KDI Kibera Productive Public Space Projects in, Kenya.  He earned a B Arch. from The University of Nairobi and a Masters in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design in 2006 where he was awarded Norman T. Newton Prize for Design Expression in Landscape Architecture and an ASLA Certificate of Honor. E-mail: aadeya(at)gmail.com

Gabriel Duarte is a founding partner in CAMPO aud, an architecture and urban design office in Rio de Janeiro, and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where he runs a design studio that investigates the intermediate scales between landscape and architecture. He has lectured extensively in both Brazil and abroad, having visiting positions at the Architectural Association, MIT, and Harvard. Having received several international awards throughout his career, such as the Wolf Tochtermann Prize, from UNESCO and UIA (International Union of Architects), and the Takashi Inuye Award, from IFHP (International Federtion from Housing and Planning), he has recently won a national competition to develop urban renewal projects for favelas (slums) in Rio de Janeiro. In combination with his professional life, Prof. Duarte is working on a PhD dissertation on urban uncertainty and vagueness at the Graduate Program in Urbanism of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PROURB-UFRJ). E-mail: duarte(at)campoud.com

Alejandro Echeverri, Architect from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín (1987) and PHD in urbanism of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Barcelona (1998-2000). He has been professor at the UPB and at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura of Barcelona. His work had earned important awards, such us: the National Architectural Award, Fernando Martínez Sanabria,(1996), Mention of Honor in the X Pan-American Biennial of Architecture in Quito (1996), The Colombian Architectural Association National Urban Planning Award (2008),  Mentions of Honor by the Colombian Architectural Association (2008). He was General Manager of the Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano of Medellín (EDU), from 2004 to 2005, and the Director of Urban Projects for Medellín from 2005 to 2008 and now he is is the Director of Center for Urban and Environmental Studies, EAFIT University Medellín. E-mail: aecheve30(at)eafit.edu.co

Flavio Janches since 1985 is partner, with Ricardo Blinder of the office A:BJ&C architects, base on Buenos Aires, Argentina working in the areas of architecture and urban design. Since 2001, Flavio has worked as a PhD researcher (TUDelft The Netherlands), as architectural and urban design professor, (Harvard University, TUDelft, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, University of Buenos Aires, and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Quito, Berlage Institute), as visiting scholar (David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University) in projects oriented to transform and to integrate marginalized urban areas (slums). He has given conferences in Jiantong University, Xiang University, Harvard University, Roger Williams University, TUDelft, UNU-WIDER, Aarhus school of Architecture, Universita IUAV de Venezia, Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel, Faculte D’architecture La Camber Horta, Brussels and at the Technica University Federico Santa Maria de Valparaiso among others.  In 2007 Playspace foundation, (based in Rotterdam the Netherlands) was created. The main goal of the foundation is to improve the life of children in slums. In 2010 Flavio also opened and is coordinating the Argentinean Playspace foundation office. Home Base: Buenos Aires, Argentina. E-mail: fjanches(at)bjc.com.ar

Haris Piplas was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1984. He has graduated in Landscape Architecture from the University in Sarajevo in 2008 where he received the Best Student award. He completed postgraduate Urban Design studies at the Technical University in Berlin. Since then he has worked as a Researcher at the Technical University in Berlin, Milan Polytechnic University and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). His memberships and activities include: Journal Editor at the European Federation for Landscape Architecture (EFLA), Young Leaders Committee at the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Germany and Steering committee member of the Bosnian Landscape Architecture Association. He was awarded with the DAAD-Scholarship, Swiss Federal Fellowship and the Fulbright Student Award. He has attended many professional events and has been invited as a Guest Lecturer to different academic and professional institutions. His recent focus is sustainable urban development in South-Eastern Europe. E-mail: haris.piplas(at)daad-alumni.de

Anuradha Mathur Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania is co-author of SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary, Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore‘s Terrain, and Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape. Her design firm Mathur/da Cunha received the Young Architects award for 2000 by the Architectural League of New York. Her awarded projects are part of a publication by Princeton Architectural Press and the Architectural League entitled, Second Nature. Mathur‘s work is directed toward design and the representation of landscapes as shifting and dynamic. Mathur is currently investigating the landscape of Mumbai, in particular the re-articulation of the Mithi River that was made visible by devastating floods in 2005. E-mail: mathur2(at)design.upenn.edu

Fernando de Mello Franco studied architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, where he received his PHD in 2005. He is a professor at São Judas Tadeu University, São Paulo, Brasil. He was a visiting professor at Harvard GSD in 2009.He co-founded MMBB Architects in 1990 together with Marta Moreira and Milton Braga. The wide range of projects he has worked on most notably include public and institutional projects with an urban scope. The focus of his investigations is on urban mobility systems and water resources management, aiming to impart urbanistic value to the infrastructural systems.He won the “Best Entry Award” at the 3rd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (2007) with the project “Watery Voids”. At the moment he is a member of the curator team of the 5th IABR (2012) called “Making City”, that aims to explore the relationship between planning, design and politics. E-mail: fmfranco(at)mmbb.com.br

Phillip Thompson is an urban planner and political scientist. Today he is associate Professor of Urban Politics at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, Cambridge. Before entering academic life, Phil worked as Deputy General Manager of the New York Housing Authority and as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination. Thompson‘s latest book is Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Struggle for a Deep Democracy and he has a recent article in The New Labor Forum entitled “What Are Labor’s True Colors?”. E-mail: jt71(at)mit.edu