UnIATA '19

Jason Hilgefort is an urbanist|architect who studied at the University of British Columbia, University of Cincinnati, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at RMIT. His work experience ranges from New York, Rotterdam, to Mumbai and includes working with Peter Calthorpe, Rahul Mehrotra, Maxwan A+U, and ZUS. He leads Maxwan’s numerous competition victories in Helsinki, Basel, Kiev, Brussels, Ostrava, Hannover, and Lithuania before winning Europan 11 in Vienna. He subsequently founded Land+Civilization Compositions, a Rotterdam | Hong Kong based studio exploring issues at the ever-expanding edge of urbanism that views city creation as an art.forum. Jason teaching experience includes Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. He was a subcurator in the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Urbanism/Architecture Biennale and a co-director of its educational platform. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor at Hong Kong University Faculty of Architecture and the Academic Director of Informal Academy for urbanism | landscape | public art in Shenzhen. He is also a regular writer, contributing to assorted publications over the years including Volume, uncube, SITE and more. He recently co-founded the Institute for Autonomous Urbanism which is focused on how the disruptive developments of dispersed infrastructure frame a moment in time where we can fundamentally reconceive of how we make, fund, and even conceptualize the world that surrounds us.

Fran Silvestre, architect in the specialty of building (Honors) by the ETSA of Valencia and in the specialty of Town Planning (Honors) by the TU/e (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), PhD at the Polytechnic University of Valencia within the program project from the territory a modern look 2012-2016 (Magna Cum Laude), is a professor in the Department of Projects of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and assistant director of the School of Architecture in the period 2010-2012. He is currently Professor of Projects at the European University of Valencia and director of the Master's MArch | In Architecture, design, and innovation of the European University of Valencia. Their study with the collaboration and the usual support in the projects of other studies such as Alfaro Hofmann in Interior Design or David Gallardo in Design and calculation of structures. Fran Silvestre has collaborated with the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira, Pritzker Prize and Doctor Honoris Causa by several universities. He has received the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2013, 2015 architecture Buil Award prize, prize WIN Architecture Award and other first prizes in the Contest of the peninsula for the remodeling of the Colonia Güell crypt_Antoni Gaudí - Barcelona, National Competition Fundación Caja de Arquitectos - Barcelona, competition for the remodeling of the axle Prado Recollects - Madrid (as a collaborator of Álvaro Siza Vieira), the College of Architects of Granada_Building Zaida exposed in the MOMA_On Site - New York (as a collaborator of Álvaro Siza Vieira), National Competition of Contemporary Art Gallery and Auditorium Edgar Neville - Valencia, and restricted competition for Shopping Center, Public Garden and building of houses in Bétera - Valencia.

Matt Drysdale founded The OCD in 2009. The Spatial Design studio located in Melbourne and Bangkok explores and provides unique urban design solutions and concepts. We are highly collaborative, engaging and understanding. Matt has extensive experience working in Australia and Asia as a major projects designer for acclaimed Australian Architect and master planner Daryl Jackson, International practice Woods Bagot as well as holding design consultancy roles for several additional architecture studios. We like to think strategically, participate globally and inspire locally with a design process based on the guiding principles of functional planning combined with contextual and landform inspired design responses. “...My work exists in a realm caught somewhere between the landscape and the built environment. With extensive experience in the built public realm of Melbourne, my thinking is beginning to question the apparent disconnect between habitation and our landscape, meaning and place-making.”