NEERAJ BHATIA is a licensed architect and urban designer whose work resides at the intersection of politics and architecture. Neeraj is founder of THE OPEN WORKSHOP, a transcalar design-research office examining the negotiation between architecture, territory, and collectivity. Select distinctions include the Architectural League Young Architects Prize, Emerging Leaders Award from Design Intelligence, and the Canadian Prix de Rome. He is an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts where he also Directs the urbanism research lab, the Urban Works Agency. Bhatia has also held teaching positions at UC Berkeley (as the visiting Esherick Professor), UT Arlington (as the visiting Ralph Hawkins Professor), Cornell University, Rice University (As the Wortham Fellow), and the University of Toronto. He is co-editor of books Bracket [Takes Action], The Petropolis of Tomorrow, Bracket [Goes Soft], Arium: Weather + Architecture, and co-author of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling — Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism and New Investigations in Collective Form. Neeraj has a Master degree in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT where he was studying on a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.
DOMINIQUE DAVISON, AIA established DRAW Architecture + Urban Design in 2005 to explore the intersection between research, resourcefulness, and simple, clean forms. Her award-winning practice is a recognized leader in sustainability and was named Firm of the Year by the American Institute of Architects Kansas City Chapter in 2014. Dominique’s commitment to vibrant communities is exemplified by her role as a founding member for Women in Design Kansas City and the Ecological Urbanism Series and her service on Kansas City’s Environmental Management Commission’s Vacant Lot Task Force. She has also taught design studios at the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Since 2013, Dominique has been leading the development efforts for PlanIT Impact. This web application tool allows architects and planners to understand resource impacts at the earliest stages of the design process. Linking Open Data with a development’s location, PlanIT Impact provides visually immersive feedback related to water, energy, CO2, transportation, and potential ROI. Before relocating to Kansas City, Dominique honed her design skills in the offices of Pelli Clarke Pelli in New Haven after earning her Master of Architecture at the Yale School of Architecture. She received a Bachelor of Art in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley and launched her career working with Daniel Solomon, FAIA.
WILLIAM LEDDY, FAIA, is a Founding Principal of San Francisco-based Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMSA), the 2017 recipient of the national AIA Firm Award. For over 30 years, he has been a national leader in the design of environments that celebrate our place in the natural world. LMSA has received more than 150 regional, national and international design awards, and is one of only three firms in the nation to have received ten or more national AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten Green Project awards – the Institute’s highest award for ecological design. Leddy has lectured widely and served as visiting professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California College of the Arts, as the Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon. A past Chair of the national AIA Committee on the Environment (2013), he currently serves as the AIA California Vice President for Climate Action and Chair of the AIA CA Committee on the Environment.
MARIANA MARTINS Mariana graduated with a Masters in Architecture from Lisbon’s Faculdade de Arquitectura of Universidade de Lisboa in 2013. She has worked in Uruguay and in another studio in Mexico City prior to entering Tatiana Bilbao Estudio. She has had the opportunity to work in projects from small/domestic scale to public urban design and has developped most of these projects from the conceptual phase to construction documentation and site supervision. She has worked on a variety of programs such as housing, student/community residencies, hotels, restaurants, cultural centers and museums. She is currently working as project coordinator for the renovation and expansion of the ESB-MAC (Mexican American Cultural Center) in Austin, Texas. This is a challenging project for its Community Engagement process and the intervention on a modernist existing building.
