Martin Lidegaard/DK

Martin Lidegaard is the Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Building, and a member of the Social Liberal Party. He was elected to parliament in 2001, and re-elected as an MP in 2005, serving as the party’s spokesperson for climate, environment, social and transport policies. He holds a Master degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Roskilde/DK and is co-founder of the environmental think tank Concito, which he chaired from 2008 to 2011.
From 1995 to 2001 he was Head of Information and Assistant Secretary General at ActionAid Denmark, an organization that fights poverty by promoting the political empowerment of the world’s poor. Martin also served as the chairman of the environmental and foreign development committee, Danish 92 Group, which is a coalition of 20 Danish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on environment and development issues. The Danish 92 Group was established in 1991 in order to co-ordinate Danish NGOs’ preparations for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Kai-Uwe Bergmann - Bjarke Ingels Group/USA

Kai-Uwe Bergmann is a Partner at BIG, bringing his expertise to proposals around the globe, including work in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. Kai-Uwe heads up BIG’s business development, which currently has the office working in over 15 different countries. In addition to these duties, Kai-Uwe is also Head of Communications at BIG. Registered as an architect in the USA, UK and Denmark, Kai-Uwe is also a LEED AP certified architect who was Project Manager on Central Asia’s first carbon neutral master plan – Zira Island in Baku, Azerbaijan. In addition to his experience with BIG, he complements his professional work through teaching assignments at IE University in Madrid and at the New School of Architecture in San Diego. Kai-Uwe has sat on numerous international juries and lectures on the works of BIG worldwide.
Kai-Uwe’s holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia and completed his Masters of Architecture with Honors at the University of California.

www.big.dk

Sahel Al Hiyari - Sahel Al Hiyari Architects/JOR

Sahel Al Hiyari is a Jordanian architect. He holds Bachelor Degrees in Architecture and Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
He carried out post-graduate work at the School of Architecture at the University of Venice, where he also taught from 1993-1995. In addition he has taught an intensive summer design studio organized by the Centre for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE) in collaboration with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2002 and 2004, as well as an option studio at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in the fall of 2010, and a vertical design studio at the American University of Beirut in the fall of 2011.
In 2002, he was chosen as the first architect to receive the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, according to which he has been a protégé of architect Álvaro Siza of Portugal. He has lectured at Columbia University, Physical Development Research Centre in Iran, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Harvard University and the American University of Beirut. He has served as a reviewer and a member of the Master Jury for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Today he is the principal architect at Sahel Al Hiyari Architects – SHA; an award-winning, design-driven Amman-based architectural practice, whose work covers a wide spectrum of design related disciplines ranging from urban design, interior and furniture design, to architectural installations and exhibition design. SHA’s diverse portfolio has been published and exhibited internationally.
SHA addresses the particularities, challenges and limitations of each project as instrumental aspects that are internalised within the design discourse and approach. The synergies between design, materiality and technique with the cultural context create an architecture that proposes diversity, change and place-related transformation. SHA’s work therefore regards context, with its traditions and conventions, as aspects subject to redefinition and reinvention. SHA is a design studio that aims to produce architecture of excellence regardless of scale, budget or location.

www.sahelalhiyari.com

Mischa Kuball

Mischa Kuball (* 1959 in Düsseldorf) has been working as an artist in public and institutional spaces since 1984. He has received a number of notable awards and scholarships, and since 1991 has been teaching at various universities and art schools. In 1999/2000 he was visiting professor at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, focuss on the subject of “light and space”. From 2004 to 2008 he taught Media Art at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe. Since October 2007 he has been Professor for Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, where he founded the MinusEins Experimental Lab.

Using the medium of light – in installations and photography –he explores architectural spaces and contributes to social and political discourses. He reflects the varying facets of cultural social structures to the point of architectural interventions that either highlight or reprogram the character and architectural context. In politically motivated and participatory projects public and private space are merged, facilitating communication between participants, the artist, the art work, and the public space. For the São Paulo Biennial in 1998 Kuball worked with private lamps. In later years, architectural projects such as the Mannesmann tower in Düsseldorf (1990) or the Stommeln synagogue (1994) were transformed into individual bodies of light. For the project ...a window in the Johanneskirche in Düsseldorf (2001), he also worked with natural light.



He has realized further pieces in well-known institutions in Germany and abroad: at Bauhaus Dessau (1992), the Jewish Museum, New York (2002), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2007), and NTT-Intercommunication Center Tokyo (2008). Temporary installations have been staged at Kunstsammlung NRW Düsseldorf (2005), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1999), ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2005) and Centre Pompidou-Metz (2010).

www.mischakuball.com

Alessandro Gobbetti

Alessandro Gobbetti (* 1982) gained his Bachelor Degree in Architecture at the IUAV University in Venice, Italy, after which he completed his Master at the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, The Netherlands.

His interest and skills in architecture, lighting and animation won him first prize for the Best Animation Video at the Enel Digital Contest in 2009. In 2010 Alessandro attended the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, USA.      

While at Weta Digital in New Zealand in 2009, Alessandro he worked on the film production Avatar as the Lighting Effects Assistant Technical Director. Amongst other awards, the film won the Academy Award (Oscar) in the category Best Visual Effects and the Visual Effects Society Award in the category Outstanding Created Environment in a Feature Motion Picture.

James Carpenter - James Carpenter Design Associates/USA

James Carpenter is a renowned, award-winning American architect and artist, specialized in daylight design. He studied architecture and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1972.

From 1972 to 1982, he worked on the development of photo responsive glasses and glass ceramics at Corning Glass Works in Corning, NY. His research on glass to control and manipulate light and information in architecture eventually brought him to design within the public realm, and he was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for the year 1989-90.

James Carpenter Design Associates Inc. was founded in 1979, Carpenter Norris Consulting, Inc., in 1994 – both in New York City – and Carpenter/Lowings Architecture and Design in London/UK in 2001.

JCDA projects in progress: the 2035 Penn Station New York Visioning Study, a new Light Space for Bornholm Art Museum in Denmark, and research on Light within Darkness in Nuuk, Greenland.

James Carpenter, James Carpenter Design Associates Inc:

“My studio’s work seeks to merge ecological and aesthetic goals by exploring the natural world. Our goal is to manifest the natural world’s material, structural and environmental beauty in the built environment. Though we use a wide range of materials, I always think of them in terms of light and their ability to reveal a density of light-information that enriches our spatial relationships and interconnection to the world around us.” 

www.jcdainc.com

• See the keynote speakers of PLDC 2011 in Madrid
• Daylighting: PLD no. 72 on Daylight design in museums