Media Architecture Biennale 2016: Digital Placemaking

An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti practices in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directs the Senseable City Lab. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Carlo holds several patents and has co-authored over 250 publications. As well as being a regular contributor to Project Syndicate, he has written for the Le Monde, El Pais, La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, Scientific American and The New York Times. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and MoMA The Museum of Modern Art in in New York City.

Carlo has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames & Hudson’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future. Blueprint Magazine included him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’, Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ and Fast Company named him as one of the ’50 Most Influential Designers in America’. He was also featured in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. Carlo was awarded the Renzo Piano Foundation prize for ‘New Talents in Architecture’. Two of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion and the Copenhagen Wheel – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.

Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the ‘BMW Guggenheim Pavilion’ in Berlin, and was named ‘Inaugural Innovator in Residence’ by the Queensland Government. He was the curator of the ‘Future Food District’ pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan. He is currently serving as Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Future Cities, and he has been selected as Special Adviser to the President and Commissioners of the European Commission, to advise on urban innovation.

Leni Schwendinger leads the Nighttime Design/Global Lighting Urbanist initiative within Arup’s lighting discipline and is a recognized authority on the many issues and applications of city lighting with more than 20 years of experience creating illuminated environments for public spaces all over the world.

This work is shared through Leni’s public speaking engagements, including worldwide “NightSeeing™, Navigate Your Luminous City” events, most recently in Bogota and Sydney. Unveiling spring 2016, Leni’s light and color concepts will transform 60-foot shade structures in Las Vegas. Large-scale design projects such as Times Square’s renovation, AS Roma Stadium and North Embarcadero Visioning Project illustrate her commitment to nighttime districts. 

Professional recognition includes multiple Lumens from the Illuminating Engineering Society, American Society of Landscape Architects, NEA Japan Residency Fellowship and a media/music production at Carnegie Hall. She is currently the Design Trust for Public Space Lighting Design Fellow. Schwendinger has enjoyed extensive coverage in design press and media, including videos produced by Architectural Digest and Dwell magazines.

Susa Pop is managing director of Public Art Lab which she founded together with Hans J. Wiegner in 2003.

As curator and cultural operator she is very much interested in creative community building through networking art projects that take advantage of the situatedness in the public space and catalyse artistic processes and public awareness in temporarily possessed urban settings – while utilising the new possibilities of digital media tools and their virtual public sphere.

Susa Pop initiated most of the PAL projects like the Media Facades Festivals, Mobile Studios and Mobile Museums. She holds worldwide conferences and workshops in the field of urban media and is lecturer at the University of Potsdam / European Media Science and at the FH Potsdam / Arts Management and Cultural Work.

Born 1965. Master in political science at University of Vienna. Doctor thesis, supervised by Helga Nowotny and Ulrike Felt, about the impact of digital media on the production and communication of knowledge.

Since 1991 media and interaction designer. Projects for Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Applied Arts, EDVG, Sysis, Museumsquarter Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe.

Since 1997 researcher and research-manager for ICT projects: web4groups, parq.at, mediafacade.net, mememapper.com.

Main research focus on: collaborative Media, Web 2.0, interaction design, network visualisations, responsive media, media facades, media architectures, media in urban space.

CURRENT ACTIVITIES:

• mememapper.com – a web service for tracking information diffusion in electronic media. (under development).
• Mediaarchitecture.org – web magazine.
• Co – organizer of Media Architecture Conference 2007 in London.
• Co – organizer of Media Facades Festival 2008 in Berlin.
• Lead partner of mediafacade.net, a research consortium of Austrian companies and research institutions that aims at the development of standardized building integrated media facades.
• Co- founder of planhaus.at, office for architecture and design.
• Co- founder of parq.at, platform for user participation in co-housing projects.
• Developer and project partner of wohnportal-berlin.de, an archive of co-housing projects in Berlin.

Ava Fatah is an Architect, Educator and Researcher. She is a Associate Professor (Reader) in Media Architecture and Urban Digital Interaction on the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation programme at the Bartlett, UCL.

Her research work has developed over the last 10 years through her post-graduate studies and the teaching and research positions she held at UCL.  Ava joined the Bartlett School of Graduate studies in Oct 2001, as a member of the Space Research Group, which has held a number of EPSRC funded awards, and was noted as the highest performer of the UCL Faculty of the Built Environment in the last RAE. 

Ava was the UCL recognised researcher on the research project 'Urban Design and Pervasive Systems' funded through the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's WINES programm and the lead academic of the ‘SCREAM’ project funded by 'UrbanBuzz: Building sustainable Communities' programme.

She is the Principle Investigator of the Research in the  Wild funded project 'Screens in the Wild’, which aims to explore the potential of networked urban screens for communities and culture. One of her main contributions to the field was published in the Urban Screens Reader; the first book to offer an anthology of extracts from key texts that provides a rich resource and focuses entirely on the topic of urban screens and media facades and  has served on the programme committees of more than five conferences or symposia in her field.

I was born in Canada and have lived and worked around the world for the past 35 years. I began my career in the live music industry when I was nineteen and have been working as a light artist ever since. I have designed and directed countless international live shows and events including rock bands; U2, R.E.M., David Bowie, Bryan Adams, David Byrne, Guy Sebastian, James Brown and television shows including; the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, MTV Awards, ARIA awards and Super Bowl Halftime Shows.

In 2006, I moved to Melbourne and formed Ramus Illumination, a design studio with a focus on interactive lighting installations, architectural facades, precinct activation and lighting and video design.

Ramus Illumination’s work is about connection - creating works that are innovative, interactive and sustainable. They are designed to engage communities in shaping their own environment. Our collaborative process results in a unique approach to urban space that aligns public art, community engagement and commercial vitality.

Stephen commenced his career in television in the early 1980s with network TEN, initially working in the fast paced TV news production environment of live links, breaking stories and news deadlines. Resourcefulness, innovation and urgency was the name of the game and this is where Stephen developed a passion for doing things better and faster. The demands of news enabled Stephen to work on news gathering projects all over the world.

Moving into technical production and operations management, Stephen was able to deliver business change with a pragmatic & commercial view of TV operations this was epitomised with the start-up of Sky News Australia, at the time a world leading news production facility.

Stephen returned to TEN in the late 90s, taking a leading role in the television transmission digitisation project then underway. He worked on projects as diverse as network planning, the transition to widescreen production and the introduction of interactive television.

In 2003 Stephen moved to TEN’s newly acquired OOH business EYE Corp, where he was responsible for product development and innovating the traditional OOH inventory. The subsequent development and deployment of a digital signage network in Australia and New Zealand fundamentally changed the nature of the sector and the system architecture that was developed in-house became the subject of an EYE innovation patent.

Stephen used his skills and commercial acumen across various areas of the EYE OOH business in airports, retail and university environments, undertaking major long term contract renewals and extending the portfolio internationally into new audience groups and formats.

Since leaving EYE after the business was divested in late 2012 Stephen has been working on business development projects in digital media. Now in partnership with Gerry through Digital Place Solutions we plan to continue driving digitally based innovation for audience engagement.

Ron Gauci is a recent appointment to Fed Square Pty Ltd as Interim CEO. Most recently Ron was the Interim CEO at Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT) and, prior to that, the CEO & Managing Director of Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club and Vice President Australia/New Zealand for Verizon Business.

Ron has also held senior management and executive positions in some of the world’s largest multinational and domestic organisations including Microsoft, Telstra and IBM. 

He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and an ambassador for SportsConnect. He also sits on a number of Boards and provides advisory services.

Ron is the Chairman of the Sanctuary Lakes Golf Club and former Chairman of the Board of the Melbourne Aces Baseball Club.

He is a former Director on the Board of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), a former member and alumni of the International CEO Forum and has held a position on the Board of Governors for the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).