Miami Museum Garage

A French artist based in Tokyo since 2007 and whose heroes range from Rabelais to Tex Avery and Orlando Furioso to Super Mario, Nicolas Buffe is the creator of a multifaceted and multidisciplinary universe mixing erudite and popular culture.

Born in 1978, he was part of a generation naturally marked by Japanese culture, developing from childhood a passion for Anime, Tokusatsu, Japanese manga and Video games. Throughout his studies he adds to these references classical works of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, such as Poliphilo’s Hypnerotomachia. This fusion of narrative and visual influence is omnipresent in his work, mostly based on the humanist notion of Serio Ludere or playing seriously.

Nicolas Buffe exhibited in several contemporary art venues in Europe or Asia, including La Maison Rouge, Paris (2007), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2008), the Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris (2010) and in contemporary art fairs both in Europe and Asia. In 2014, he held a solo show “The Dream of Polifilo” at the Hara Museum of contemporary art Tokyo. Poliphilo’s Hypnerotomachia is the main theme of the Nuit Blanche 2016 in which he participates simultaneously in Paris and Kyoto. He held in 2017 two solo exhibitions at the Hong Kong City Hall at the occasion of the French May, and at K11 Hong Kong.

With offices in Spain, Miami and Dubai, and projects from China to the USA, Clavel Arquitectos are specialized in singular projects that are technically viable and also meet with economic, social, environmental and administrative requirements. Clients, neighbors, customers… all are closely linked to the design process from the start and their diversity is considered in the design process and when searching for solutions to the proposed objectives. To do so, we have a strong multidisciplinary team made up of architects, engineers, biologists and interior designers, all of whom are indispensable due to the diverse and complex projects they deal with. From projects of millions of Euros to small interior design projects, we select our projects not for their size or budget but for the potential they have in creating a better city and happier citizens. Their projects have received more than 80 awards; have appeared in more than 100 national and international publications and have received thousands of references in the media.

K/R (Keenen/Riley) is a knowledge – and
creativity – based practice with a focus and
dedication to architecture and design. Led by
John Keenen and Terence Riley, K/R engages its
clients in strategic conceptualization that leads
to highly distinctive environments, buildings,
interiors, and experiences.

With office in New York, K/R’s collaborative effort has made distinctive contributions in architecture, master planning, urban design, interior design, museum planning, exhibition design, sustainability, and education.

J. MAYER H. und Partner, Architekten mbB is an international award winning architecture office with projects at the intersection of architecture, communication, and new technology. From urban planning schemes and buildings, to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology, and nature form the background for a new production of space. J.MAYER.H was founded in 1996 by Juergen Mayer H. in Berlin. In January 2014, Andre Santer and Hans Schneider joined as partners in the firm.

J.MAYER.H has a wide array of completed national and international projects and has been honored with many international awards. Juergen Mayer H. studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union and Princeton University. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide and is part of numerous collections including MoMA New York, SF MoMA, Kunstbibliothek Berlin, State of Berlin Museum Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Architekturmuseum der TU München as well as numerous private collections. He is member of the advisory boards at Princeton University Architecture School, The Bauhaus Stiftung Dessau, Flussbad Berlin e.V. and Make Shift Architecture Festival Berlin 2015.

WORKac is interested in positing architecture at the intersection of the urban, the rural and the natural. We embrace reinvention and collaborate with other fields to rethink architecture ‘in the world.’ In the face of overwhelming challenges and increasingly normative scenarios, we remain stubborn in our commitment to imagine alternate scenarios for the future of cities. We appropriate the more productive aspects of the urban discourse – from density and compression, to appropriateness of scale, the expression of intelligent and shared infrastructures, and a more careful integration between architecture, landscape and ecological systems – to bear upon architecture as we find shared concerns across our global practice. We hold unshakable lightness and polemical optimism as a means to move beyond the projected and towards the possible, an ambition with which we approach every project.

WORKac, recently named the AIA NY State’s Firm of the Year, has achieved international acclaim for projects such as the master plan for the New Holland Island Cultural Center in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wieden+Kennedy’s 50,000 sq ft, three story New York offices, the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas, the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan and the Edible Schoolyard at P.S. 216 in Brooklyn. Currently, in Africa, the firm is building its winning competition entry for a new 200,000SF Conference Center in Libreville, Gabon. Targeting LEED Gold certification, the center will host diplomatic meetings. In the United States, WORKac is completing construction of a residential conversion of a historic New York cast-iron building, designing a distillery museum and gathering space in the Adirondacks, and a new storefront facade for a parking garage in Miami’s Design District. In China, the firm recently completed a 2,000-acre master plan for seven new university campuses in Weifang, and we are starting design of the 450,000SF main library on the first Weifang campus, where the master plan is now under construction.

WORKac was founded in 2003.

Dan Wood

Dan Wood, FAIA, LEED AP, leads international projects for WORKac ranging from masterplans to buildings across the United States as well as in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Wood holds the 2013-14 Louis I. Kahn Chair at the Yale School of Architecture and has taught at the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture, and the UC Berkeley School of Environmental Design, where he was the Friedman Distinguished Chair. Wood is originally from Rhode Island and lived in Paris and in the Netherlands for many years before moving to New York in 2002. He is a licensed architect in the State of New York and is LEED certified.

Amale Andraos

Amale Andraos is the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She has taught at numerous institutions including the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania Design School, and the American University in Beirut. Andraos is committed to research and publications. Her work has recently explored the question of representation by re-examining the concept of the ‘Arab City.’ Andraos was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She has lived in Saudi Arabia, France, Canada, and the Netherlands prior to moving to New York in 2002. She serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York, the Advisory Board of the Arab Center for Architecture in Beirut and is a member of the faculty steering committee for the Columbia Global Centers | Middle East.