Ignite
Reinventing Thompson Center design challenge
JURY
DONG Gong
Founder / Design Principal, Vector Architects, Beijing, China
DONG Gong founded Vector Architects in 2008. He was elected as the Foreign Member of French Academy of Architecture in 2019 and in the same year, was appointed as the Plym Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been teaching Design Studios at Tsinghua University since 2014. He and Vector Architects have been invited to various major exhibitions, including the 2018 Free Space Venice Biennale, and have won international awards such as “100+ Best Architecture Firms” selected by Domus (2019); nominated for the Swiss Architectural Award (2018); the overall winner of the Italian “Archmarathon Awards” (2016); and the “Design Vanguard” selected by Architectural Record (2014). DONG Gong has been invited as a guest speaker and critic by academic and professional institutions including Tsinghua University (China), The Technical University of Madrid (Spain), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich-ETH (Switzerland), and la Société Franç des Architectes (France). Vector's projects have been published in Casabella, Arquitectura Viva, The New York Times, A+U, Detail, The Architectural Review, Domus, and many others. The firm’s representative works include Seashore Library, Seashore Chapel, Alila Hotel in Yangshuo, the Renovation of the Captain’s House, Changjiang Art Museum, and Suzhou Intangible Cultural Center.
Winka Dubbeldam
Founder & Partner, Archi-Tectonics NYC LLC, New York, United States
Winka Dubbeldam is the founder and partner of the WBE certified Design Studio Archi-Tectonics NYC, LLC. Dubbeldam is widely known for her award-winning work, recognized as much for its design excellence as for its use of smart building systems, sustainable materials, and innovative structures. Archi-Tectonics’ work is found in the USA, Europe, and Asia. Archi-Tectonics recently won the Asian Games 2022 Design Competition in Hangzhou China [2018], that is under construction to open in 2022. Winka Dubbeldam is also the Chair and Miller Professor of Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania , where she has gathered an international network of innovative research and design professionals, she is the Director of the Advanced Research and Innovation lab [ARI] at Weitzman ARCH. She previously taught at the graduate architecture programs at Columbia-, Cornel-, and Harvard University, among other prestigious institutions. Currently Professor Dubbeldam is the External Examiner of the Bartlett London and was named one of the DesignIntelligence 30 Most Admired Educators 2015. Publications include the three monographs Winka Dubbeldam, Architect (010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 1996), AT-INdex (Princeton Press, NYC, 2006), and Archi-Tectonics (DAAB publishers, 2010); a new book “Strange Objects” is planned for 2021 with Actar, Spain. The work was also published in numerous international architecture and design periodicals.
Chris Bosse
Director, LAVA Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, Australia
Chris Bosse is director of LAVA based in Sydney, Australia and Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. With Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck he founded LAVA in 2007 as a network with offices in Sydney, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Vietnam. LAVA merges future technologies with the patterns of organisation found in nature to build a smarter, friendlier, more socially and environmentally responsible future. Educated in Germany and Switzerland, he worked with several high-profile European architects before moving to Sydney. Whilst Associate Architect at PTW Architects in Sydney he completed many projects in Asia and the Middle East. His work on the Watercube Olympic swimming centre in Beijing received the Atmosphere Award at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale and the AIA Jorn Utzon Award for International Architecture; he won an Emerging Architect Award from RIBA in 2008 London, a 40 Under 40 Award in 2012 and Australian Design Honour at the Australian Design Centre in Sydney in 2015. LAVA was the 2016 European Architecture Laureate which honours the commitment and achievements of the best European architects who have determined a more critical, intellectual, and artistic approach to the design of buildings and cities.
John Ronan FAIA
Founding Principal, John Ronan Architects, United States
John Ronan FAIA is Founding Principal of John Ronan Architects in Chicago where he serves as Lead Designer and is known for his abstract yet sensuous work which explores materiality and atmosphere. John holds a Master of Architecture degree with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan. His work has been exhibited internationally and been covered extensively by the international design press, including two publications on the firm’s work. John has lectured widely and his writings have appeared in books, architecture journals and Poetry magazine. His firm is recipient of numerous design awards, including three AIA Institute National Honor Awards. In 2017, John was recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award. He is currently the John and Jeanne Rowe Endowed Chair Professor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture.