The Battery + Brooklyn Bridge Park

Fadi Masoud is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. Masoud is also the Director of the Centre for Landscape Research. His research, teaching, and design work establishes relationships between dynamic large-scale environmental systems, design, and instrumental planning policy tools. Masoud leads research projects on adaptive urban and landscape design, novel resilient urban codes, and the future of suburban open space. Prior to joining the Daniels Faculty, Masoud held teaching and research appoint-ments at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently sits on Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel as well as on Resilient Toronto’s Urban Flooding Working Group.

Brent D. Ryan is Head of the City Design and Development Group and Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His research focuses on the aesthetics and policies of contemporary urban design, particularly with respect to current and pressing issues like deindustrialization and climate change. Professor Ryan’s first book Design After Decline: How America rebuilds shrinking cities, was selected by Planetizen as one of its ten best urban planning books of 2012, and his second book, The Largest Art: A Measured Manifesto for a Plural Urbanism, a treatise on urban design as a plural art was just published by MIT Press. Ryan has also consulted for the World Bank on planning projects for emerging economies in Eastern Europe, and he initiated a five-year study of sustainability in Siberian cities, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Vince Beiser is an award-winning Canadian-American journalist and author based in Los Angeles. His first book, The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization was a finalist for a PEN/E.O. Wilson Award and a California Book Award. Vince has reported from over 100 countries, states, provinces, kingdoms, occupied territories, liberated areas, no man’s lands and disaster zones. He has published in Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Guardian, The Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. He is also a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Hadi El-Shayeb is a Landscape Architect and Urban Designer. His design research agenda has largely focused on advocacy for climate resilience and environmental restoration from; regenerative approaches for the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, to coastal city adaptation for Charlottetown PEI, San Francisco Bay, and Tobago in the Caribbean’s. In the past he’s also worked at the GRIT (Green Roof Innovation and Testing) Lab, and in public policy at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. He is the recipient of the ASLA Certificate of Merit, John E. Irving Prize, and the University of Toronto Daniels’ Faculty Design Prize.

Adam Grydehoj holds a PhD in Ethnology from the University of Aberdeen. He studies the intersection of culture, economy, politics, and space in island communities, with a recent emphasis on the Arctic and East Asia. Adam is executive editor of Island Studies Journal, an executive board member of the International Small Island Studies Association, research associate at the University of Prince Edward Island’s Institute of Island Studies, guest professor at Guangzhou University’s Department of Tourism Studies, and senior researcher at the City Facilitators urban governance consultancy.

Kian Goh, is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Dr. Goh’s current research investigates the urban spatial politics of climate change responses. A licensed architect, Dr. Goh cofounded design firm SUPER-INTERESTING! She has practiced professionally with Weiss/ Manfredi and MVRDV. She previously taught at Northeastern University, the University of Pennsylvania, the New School, and Washington University in St. Louis. Recent publications include articles on climate change adaptation and urban flooding in Urban Studies and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, a book chapter on urban design and social justice, and articles on architecture

and climate change in e-flux journal and Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, and queer space and activism in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. She is completing a book titled A Political Ecology of Design: Contested Visions of Urban Climate Resilience.

Luna Khirfan is Associate Professor at the School of Planning, the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada. She is Lead Author for Chapter 6: “Cities, settlements and key infrastructure” as part of the Working Group II contribution to the upcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Her research and publications underscore local communities’ engagement in urban planning and design with a particular focus on adapting built form to climate change. Dr. Khirfan transforms the conventional “participatory design” role of the charrette into a method of data collection and a mechanism of knowledge exchange with the local communities. Her current research project explores the potential of de-culverting/daylighting urban streams for place-making and for climate change adaptation and mitigation. She has created an interactive inventory of all known stream daylighting projects while investigating in depth Amman’s (Jordan), Zürich’s (Switzerland), and Seoul’s (S. Korea) urban streams.

Xiaoxuan Lu is Assistant Professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, where she teaches landscape history and theory, and design studios. She practiced at Turenscape in Beijing, West 8, Bjarke Ingels Group, and SWA. Her research focuses on the cultural landscape and geography of conflict, particularly in transboundary regions. Applying analytical cartography, photography and videography in her research, she aims to reveal the hidden layers of landscape where multiple tensions converge. Xiaoxuan has served as an editor and columnist for Landscape Architecture Frontiers since 2012, which won an Honor Award in the Communications category of 2015 ASLA professional awards. Her “Experiments and Processes” column showcases a range of speculative design project. It functions as a platform for exploring narratives behind experimental methodologies, representations and results, while projecting a future for landscape architecture that is positioned between research, storytelling, and design. Xiaoxuan holds the degree of Bachelor of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture, Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University, and PhD in Human Geography from Peking University.

Ben Mendleson is a writer and filmmaker focused on the intersections of urban political ecology and documentary media. From 2018-2020, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Culture at Portland State University.

Atlier NL Founded by Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck in 2008, Atelier NL is a design studio that reshapes local raw materials into everyday objects that showcase the richness of the earth. Over the past decade they have developed a unique research methodology that transforms local clay and sand into ceramic and glass objects that analyze the hidden qualities and narratives of the earth. Their work calls for an expanded valuation of local sourcing and production by focusing on the graceful subtleties of the natural world and how the integration of local earth products into daily life is a critical step towards greater environmental balance. Their research-based projects aim to reveal and inspire while opening the eyes of the general public and industry specialists alike.

Michael T. Wilson, is an Associate Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation and a registered landscape architect. His work with the US Air Force, US Coast Guard, and Federal Emergency Management Agency among other sponsors focuses on energy and the environment, risk and uncertainty, and disaster recovery, as well as data analysis and visualization. Dr. Wilson’s prior professional experience ranges from large-scale economic development and urban infrastructure projects in Toronto, ON; St. Louis, MO; and Austin, TX to long-term planning in the New York-New Jersey region after Hurricane Sandy. He has published research on emergency management, stormwater planning, resilient building standards, and flood insurance. Since 2013, he has had a mayoral appointment to the Boston Conservation Commission, which regulates the city’s urban development in the floodplain as well as wetland, riverine, and coastal ecosystems.