Keynotes

We are pleased to announce the conference keynotes:

Liza Fior

Liza Fior is one of the founding partners of muf architecture/art, a London-based practice of architects, artists and urban designers. Since 1994 muf architecture/art has established a reputation for pioneering and innovative projects that address the social, spatial and economic infrastructures of the public realm. The practice philosophy is driven by an ambition to realize the potential pleasures that exist at the intersection between the lived and the built. The creative process is underpinned by a capacity to establish effective client relationships that reveal and value the desires and experience of varied constituencies. Fior teaches at Central Saint Martins, UAL on the MA Architecture: Cities and InnovationCourse. In 2009, she taught as a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University’s School of Architecture, leading an advanced design studio and seminar.

Professor Ray Land

Ray Land is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education and Emeritus Fellow of University College at Durham University. He has published widely in the field of educational research, including works on academic development, learning technology and quality enhancement. He is best known for his theory (with Jan Meyer) of Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge.

He has been a higher education consultant for the OECD, the European Commission (EC) and the British Council and has recently been involved in projects in Europe, Latin America and India.  He has given presentations on his research in over fifty countries across six continents. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

 

Professor Clare Twomey

Clare Twomey is a British artist and a research fellow at the University of Westminster who works with clay in large-scale installations, Sculpture and site-specific works. Over the past 10 years she has exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, Crafts Council, Museum of Modern Art Kyoto Japan, the Eden Project and the Royal Academy of Arts. Within these works Twomey has maintained her concerns with materials, craft practice and historic and social context. Twomey’s work typically involves intense research, collaboration in fabrication, and interactive presentations. A recurring theme in her work is the relationship that binds people to things. Her use of the medium of clay involves various forms of the material, including raw clay and powder, and techniques and processes including slip cast and factory production. Twomey sees her practice as research: she has explained that she is “engaged in a process of inquiry, an exploration of ideas, predicated on exploring characteristics of clay.”

 

Meejin Yoon

J. Meejin Yoon is an architect, designer, and educator. She is currently Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.  Previously, she was Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT where she began teaching in 2001. Yoon is the co-founding principal of Höweler + Yoon Architecture, a multidisciplinary architecture and design studio that has garnered international recognition for a wide range of built work. Her design work and research investigate the intersections between architecture, technology, and public space. Yoon received the New Generation Design Leadership Award by Architectural Record (2015), the US Artist Award in Architecture and Design (2008), and the Rome Prize in Design (2005). She is the co-author of Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig and Absence. Yoon received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University with the AIA Henry Adams Medal in 1995, a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from Harvard University in 1997, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Korea in 1998.