who are we?

Carlos Arroyo is the founder and director of Carlos Arroyo Architects, a Madrid-based firm with works in Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, UK and Rwanda, exploring a varied range of fields with a special emphasis on sustainable development and research into new forms of housing. His benchmarks include the first C2C certified building in France, the first six star certified green building in tropical Africa, or a building already labeled as heritage (patrimonium voor de toekomst) in Belgium. His work is published worldwide as well as featured in major exhibitions like the Venice Biennale, Paris’s Centre Pompidou, or Seul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza. He has been a guest professor and lecturer at many universities and institutes all over the world including Princeton, MIT, BerlinTU, Bauhaus, Politecnico di Milano and Tokyo University. He currently teaches at the Universidad Europea de Madrid (ES), where he is Academic Curator of the Master in Architecture.

Aglaée Degros is professor and chair of the Institute of Urbanism at the Graz University of Technology (AT). Aglaée was born in 1972 in Leuven (BE) and studied architecture in Brussels (BE), Karlsruhe (DE) and Tampere (FI). In 2001, she cofounded Artgineering, an office based in Rotterdam (NL), which moved to Brussels (BE) in 2014. Aglaée has held various teaching positions and visiting professorships at a.o. the Delft University of Technology (NL), the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture (NL), the Free University of Brussels (BE), the Wien Academy of Fine Arts (AT) and the Wien University of Technology (AT). She is a co-editor of Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe (2013) and co-author of Cycle infrastructure (2013), of Brussels, [re]discovering its spaces (2014), of Traffic space is public space (2019) and Basics of urbanism (2021). She regularly serves as jury member for international urban planning and design competitions.

Based in Barcelona (ES), Miriam García is the founder and principal of LANDLAB, with projects in spatial planning, landscape and urban design. Many of these works have national and international recognition such as the Prize of the XII Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism or Good Practice 2012 of the Un-Habitat Committee. She combines professional practice with research and teaching on both sides of the Atlantic. Currently she teaches at the University of Barcelona as well as in the University in Madrid (ES) and at the Pontificia Bolivarian University (CO). Her research and professional practice are linked to landscape and ecology as drivers of change in plans and projects at multiple scales. In this sense, many of the studies and projects focus on the resilience of coastal environments, urban or metropolitan, to the effects of climate change. She is also a Member of the Assembly for Climate Neutral and Smart Cities of the European Commission.

Socrates Stratis is a Ph.D. architect, urbanist, Associate Professor, at the Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, and a co-founder of the critical urban practice agency AA & U, Cyprus. 
His research focuses on the political agencies of architecture and urban design. He studies the strategic value of urban design, as well as the social dimensions of architecture. He oscillates between diffractive practice and practice-based research, thanks to entanglements between teaching, practicing, curating, and writing.
The "Redevelopment of the Heraklion old city waterfront" Crete (GR), is their successfully implemented Europan 4 project.
The “Guide to Common Urban Imaginaries in Contested Spaces”, jovis. 2016 is one of his main editorial works.
His curatorial and activist work involves Cyprus participation in the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture, (www.contestedfronts.org), as well as the “Hands-on Famagusta” project (www.handsonfamagusta.org).

Bernd Vlay is based in Vienna. He is founder and co-director of StudioVlayStreeruwitz, an office which has been realizing large scale urban and architectural projects, combining architecture, urbanism and research from local to translocal scales. In 2019 he received with his partner Lina Streeruwitz the Federal Award "Hans Hollein Art-Price for Architecture“. In the same year his office was shortlisted for the Mies and der Rohe prize with the project „Performative Brise-Soleil“. Since 1999 he has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, sharing a studio with Eyal Weizman in 2006 and 2007, and holding the Roland Rainer Chair in 2012 and 2013. In 2003 he was guest-professor at Cornell University in Ithaca/New York. From 2018 to 2020 he was member of the City-Design Council of Linz. He is currently member of the Urban Development-Committee in Linz, the Design Council of the City of Innsbruck, and the Design Council of the Real Estate Development Agency of the Republic of Austria (BIG). Former General Secretary of Europan Österreich from 1999 to 2018, he is now the President of the national organization.  

Chris Younès is a Psychosociologist, doctor and HDR (habilitated to supervise research) in philosophy. She is a professor at ESA (Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris), founder and member of the GERPHAU laboratory (EA 7486, ENSA Paris-la-Villette), of the PhilAU Thematic Scientific Network (Ministry of Culture, ENSA Clermont-Ferrand) and co-founder and member of ARENA (Architectural Research European Network). Chris Younès is also a member of several architecture and urban planning competitions, and author of several book prefaces, gives numerous conferences in France and abroad (Europe, Middle East, China, Canada, South America).
Her work and research develop the question of inhabited spaces at the crossroads of nature and artifacts, ethics, aesthetics and politics. She has edited more than twenty collective publications, and authored numerous articles and books, including: Architectures de l’existence. Ethique. Esthétique. Politique. - Hermann, 2018

Céline Bodart holds a professional degree in Architecture and a post-graduate diploma in Architecture & Philosophy. She also graduated in the Experimental Program in Political Arts (SPEAP) from Sciences Po Paris. Ph.D in Architecture from the University of Paris8 (FR) in co-supervision with the University of Liège (BE), she currently teaches at the School of Architecture (ENSA) of Paris La Villette (FR). With Chris Younès, she has co-edited several publications, included Encore l'architecture – encore la philosophie (Hermann, 2016) and Au tournant de l'expérience : interroger ce qui se construit, partager ce qui nous arrive (Hermann, 2018). She also contributed to the publication Cities and architecture under debate, Europan (Parenthèses, 2019).

Julio de la Fuente is the co-founder of Gutiérrez-delaFuente Arquitectos, a Madrid based architecture, urban, landscape and research office of international scope working between Spain, Germany and Belgium, exploring the role of the mobile architect with a flexible structure to promote international collaborations. The office was awarded in numerous competitions, including a.o. E9 Selb (DE) and Ama (ES), E10 Forchheim (DE) or E11 Linz (AT), or the Bauwelt Preis 2013 and the COAM Award 2013. He is a regular guest professor at universities in Spain, Sweden and Germany. He is co-author of Rendering the Collective in the Circular City (2019), Talks around the Spanish Urban Agenda (2020) and Atlas of Innovation, Nuevo Madrid Mix (2020).

Nicolás Martínez Rueda is an architect who graduated With Honors from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, with previous training at Granada University (Spain) and Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). Founder and main organizer of DOCEXDOCE Architecture Competitions in Europe, Latin America, and India. Currenly working at the office DataAE (Barcelona), in the past he has also collaborated with CUAC Arquitectura and Tomás García Píriz Arquitectura (Granada). Co-founder of MondoNostrum Magazine and invited to the XIV Mundaneum Congress in Mendoza (Argentina) in 2019. Since 2017, Nicolás is also an active member of EASA (European Architecture Students Assembly), organizing multiple workshops for the 600 architecture students community.

Dimitri Szuter holds a professional degree in Architecture after a background in Applied Arts and Landscape Architecture. Calling himself an architect-performer, he is completing a Ph.D in Architecture at the GERPHAU laboratory on the encounters between performance theories and the city's making processes. He experiments with his theoretical hypotheses as part of the research-project laboratory / collaborative action group on performative transformation P.E.R.F.O.R.M!, of which he is the founder since 2017, Paris (FR). He teaches at the School of Architecture of Paris-La-Villette (FR) since 2016 and holds a research grant at the Franco-British research institute Theatrum Mundi since 2019.