http://www.brucemaudesign.com

Bruce Mau is an internationally recognized expert on innovation and creativity and one of the world's greatest designers. He willfully ignores all professional boundaries, expanding the concept of design into intellectual territory it rarely dares to tread. Born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, Bruce studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

He has held the post of design director of Zone Books since its inception in 1985 and of editor (along with Sanford Kwinter and Jonathan Crary) of Swerve Editions, a Zone imprint. From 1991 to 1993, he served as creative director of I-D magazine. He was the Associate Cullinan Professor at the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston, Texas, from 1996 to 1999. He has been a thesis advisor at the University of Toronto's School of Architecture, artist in residence at California Institute of the Arts, and a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has lectured widely throughout North America and Europe and in 1998, was awarded the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation.

Bruce is admired for his ambition, humor and optimism. He has designed almost everything that can be designed; from books to bookstores; from office textiles and library signage to a museum of biodiversity with Frank Gehry.

Recently, Bruce has embarked on his most challenging project to date, the Massive Change exhibition. The show is about nothing less than the design of the world. The project which encompasses a book, a traveling exhibition, a radio show, a website, and an upcoming feature film, is just the latest in a long line of multi-disciplinary works that Mau has collaborated on.

Bruce's work is recognized all over the world. He has worked on three of the new millenniums most talked about buildings: The MoMA in New York, Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Public Library. With Koolhaas, he co-authored S,M,L,XL, a book that obliterated the traditional divide between designer and client. He has designed all the titles for New York's Zone publishers and his own book Life Style, which was chosen as a Time magazine design of the year.

http://www.designbox.us/index.html
http://www.gamil.com
http://www.gamilacompany.com/tea/buzz.html

Aly Khalifa started Gamil Design in October of 1995, where he combined his creative and technical talents into truly innovative products. He has degrees in both industrial design and mechanical engineering and substantial experience in international product development. Aly's work has focused on cutting-edge wearable design ranging from cycling gloves and shoes to sports apparel, eyewear and digital equipment, gathering several patents in the process. He has evolved Gamil Design to include extensive experience in branding and product strategy. As member of IDEAS, a select group of sporting goods designers based in Europe, Aly works in color, materials and trend forecasting. His clients include Bausch & Lomb, Trek Bicycle, Nike, Panasonic, Outdoor Products and Evenflo.

Aly has led creativity workshops for a number of groups and was a visiting professor at the North Carolina State University School of Design. He co-founded Designbox, an interactive design consortium and exhibition space which facilitates creative thinking. Recently, Aly has undertaken a joint venture with the owner of a local cafe to produce The Teastick. This innovative product has received significant press and sales across the world, and is leading the way to several other new products.

http://www.jerseydevildesignbuild.com

Steve Badanes attended Wesleyan University for undergraduate studies and Princeton University for a master's degree in architecture. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts as well as a fellowship from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Steve has conducted design/build workshops at the University of Technology in Helsinki, Finland, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, the University of Miami, Ball State University, the University of California in San Diego, Florida A&M University, Miami University in Ohio, North Dakota State University, the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin and the Yestermorow School in the US.

As a practicing architect, Steve's commissions have included private homes, schools and public structures. In 1990 he commissioned the winning entry of Hall of Giants Competition in Seattle, entitled 'The Fremont Troll'. Steve is a founder of Jersey Devil, an architectural firm that perpetuates the tradition of medieval craftsmen. The firm is comprised of skilled craftsmen, architects, inventors and artists "committed to the interdependence of building and design."

Jersey Devil architects and builders live on-site during construction of their designs. They are known for energy efficiency and innovative use of materials. Steve has lectured on the works of Jersey Devil at over 100 universities in the U.S, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. Their work has been the subject of two books, The Jersey Devil Design/Build Book (1985) and Devil's Workshop 25 Years of Jersey Devil Architecture (1997).

At the University of Washington, Steve holds the Howard Wright Endowed Chair and leads design/build studios to focus on community service projects in the Seattle area. He is the co-founder of the  Design/Build Mexico Program which won an AIA Education Honor Award in 1997. In 2002, he received the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award at the national meeting in New Orleans.

http://www.edelkoort.com

The Edelkoort Group, one of the world's most renowned trend forecasters was founded by Li Edelkoort. She studied fashion and design at the School of Fine Arts in Arnhem. Upon graduation she became a buyer at the leading Dutch department store the Bijenkorf. It was there that she discovered her talent for sensing upcoming trends. Her unique ability to predict what consumers would want to buy several seasons ahead of time brought her to Paris in 1975, where she worked full time as an independent trend consultant.

Li's work has pioneered trend forecasting as a profession, from innovative trend forums for Premeire Vision in the late 1980s to long-ranging lifestyle analysis for the world's leading brands since 1990.

The Edelkoort Group provides trend analysis and consulting services to major international companies in a wide range of sectors from cosmetics to cars, telephones to public transportation, from food and flowers to bricks and paper. Studying the links between art, fashion, design and consumer culture, the Edelkoort Group analyzes and advances the concepts, colors and materials which will be important in two or more years. Hence, "There is no creation without advance knowledge, and without design, a product cannot exist."

Li has received continual recognition for her work in providing inspirational stimulus and fostering creative talent. In 2003, Time magazine named her as one of the world's 25 most influential people in fashion, while she received the Netherlands' Grand Seigneur Prize one year later for her work in fashion and textile.

In 2005, Aid to Artisans honored Li with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her support of craft and design and appointed her to the board of the new European branch of its association. Li was named one of the 30 most influential people in design by I-D magazine. North Meets South, an exciting new design exhibit curated by Li, began touring Saint Etienne, Paris, Stockholm and Cape Town.

http://www.allevio.com

Mario Gagliardi is a designer, strategist and design theorist. Mario holds an MBA from the University of Westminster and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He develops design and marketing strategies for global organizations and regularly speaks and writes about design, culture and management. He is currently principal of Allevio Design.

Mario started working as a product designer at Philips, as brand manager and then design director for several European companies. In the mid to late nineties, the time when the Korean design scene was emerging, he contributed to shaping a design culture as a consultant for the Korea Institute of Design Promotion and the Samsung Innovative Design Lab. In 1996 he became chief designer of LG, one of Korea's largest multinationals, where he headed the design strategy group. He developed key strategies and a range of best-selling brands and products that won several design prizes such as the Good Design mark of the Korean Republic and the World Packaging Association prize. In 2000, he took up the post of advisor to the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture, developing design strategies for a creative learning infrastructure.

Mario was a professor for design at the International Design School for Advanced Studies in Seoul. He regularly lectures at universities such as London Business School (UK), The Surrey Institute of Art and Design (UK), Chaoyang University (Taiwan), Tsinghua University (China), and Salzburg University of Applied Science (Austria).

With his theoretical work, Mario aims to push the boundaries of design by exploring the intersections of design with philosophy, cognitive science, sociology, economics and marketing. He has written articles for publications such as Monthly Design (Korea), Design Foundation (Austria), Form (Germany), Design Matters (Denmark) and the Design Management Review (US). He is a regular speaker at international congresses, such as the Era 05 World Design Congress in Copenhagen, the European International Design Management Conference in Barcelona, the 5th Marketing Conference in Istanbul, the Norwegian Innovation Conference Innotown and the Product Development and Management Association in London

http://archnet.org/shared/community-member.tcl?user_id=9420
http://www.architecture-identity.de/research_p_middleeast.htm


Khaled Asfour received his bachelors degree in architecture from Cairo University. As a student he acquired practical training in Siemen’s Munich office and after graduating he worked as an intern architect in DLC Milan. His early exposure to European practice made him aware of a different design mentality compared to that of Egypt. This exposure encouraged him to pursue higher education in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At 31, he completed his Masters and PhD, specializing in history, theory and criticism of architecture.

During the next seven years, he taught at King Faisal University of Saudi Arabia and traveled throughout The Gulf, Middle East and North Africa in search of architectural excellence in the Arab world. He wrote extensively on this subject which qualified him to become the regional editor responsible for all Arab entries in Dizionario Della Architettura Del XX Secolo published in Turin. He was then selected to be a research fellow at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design. Khaled has sat on international juries at the American University of Sharjah, Bahrain University, and Riyadh Development Authorities.

He held the post of technical reviewer for The Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Recently, he was invited to join a research group working on Architecture and Identity organized by Berlin Technical University and funded by Volkswagen Foundation. His research has covered most of the Arab world. Over the last five years, he has been teaching in Misr International University in Cairo.

Khaled has also worked in consortiums to evaluate and upgrade projects as well as design new ones. He is currently writing a book on a young architect practicing in the Gulf.

http://www.ziva.org.zw/afrikan.htm
http://www.myfonts.com/person/mafundikwa/saki
http://www.dsa.org.za/library/07)%20Saki%20Mafundikwa.pdf

Saki Mafundikwa was educated in Zimbabwe during the colonial era. In 1979, he attended Indiana University to study fine arts and telecommunications. Upon graduation with a bachelor's degree, he went to Yale University and graduated with an MFA in Graphic Design in 1985.

It was there that Saki discovered the existence of sub-Saharan scripts and alphabets designed by Afrikans themselves - without the influence of the Roman or Arabic alphabets. This developed into a passion and, after more research, almost twenty years later became 'Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika'. The book has been nominated for a Non-Fiction Literary Award by the NAACP.

Saki worked as a designer and art director in New York from 1985 to1997. He then decided to return home to found his country's first graphic design and new media college, ZIVA.

It had always been Saki's dream to open a design school in Zimbabwe for students of all races and economic backgrounds, inspired by their own environment, including Afrikan and other non-western perspectives. He considered the school to be not only a place for helping students with the learning process, but more importantly a school of thought, or even more daring an Afrikan Bauhaus. After all, Afrika had fired-up turn-of-the-century European artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Paul Klee. Saki then started the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts in 1999. The school is now in its sixth year of operation, still not funded but remains a success against unimaginable odds.

Saki has participated in exhibitions in Europe and US and has written numerous essays and articles on design for publications around the world. He has also traveled widely in North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa lecturing about his ideas for the globalization of design and design education.

Samia Rab

“Heritage or Hermeneutics: Role of architects in connecting past, present and future in the built environment”

Having taught students of architecture at the University of Hawaii, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the American University of Sharjah, I have had the opportunity to encourage their engagement with diverse historic built environments of these three contexts. As a registered architect in Pakistan, my professional practice includes architectural and urban conservation of historic districts in Cairo, Lahore and Sana’a. My research focuses on contemporary pursuit of cultural and regional identity in architecture and urban design. In my presentation, I will shift the discourse on “heritage” towards a focus on the role architects in casting an interpretive look at the past to ensure that the present gets incorporated for the future.

http://www.evamaddox.com
http://www.perkinswill.com/people/designers/evamaddox.aspx
http://www.perkinswill.com/media/newsarticle.aspx?id=144
http://www.archeworks.org/arche_admin.cfm
http://www.interiordesign.net/id_article/CA603221/id?stt=001

Eva Maddox is a principal in the architectural and interior design firm Perkins and Will. She is a fellow of the International Interior Design Association (FIIDA) and an associate member of the AIA. She received her bachelor's degree in design from the College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning at the University of Cincinnati.

In 1992, Eva was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. She is the recipient of over 100 awards for design excellence, including many national and local honor awards from the AIA, IIDA and ASID. She has received nine Big I awards, for interior design excellence, and the International Interior Design Association award for Design Excellence.

Eva teaches design theory and lectures regularly at national universities, she has also lectured internationally at universities in India, Bangladesh and Holland on the value of good design to society. In addition, Eva teaches design theory and future studies at Archeworks.

In 2004, Eva was a recipient of the prestigious Women Who Make A Difference Award from the International Women's Forum representing the state of Illinois. In 2002, she was named Chicagoan of the Year and was featured in Fast Company magazine.

http://dept.kent.edu/museum/exhibit/toledo/Toledo1.htm
http://www.cooperhewitt.org/NDA/2005/award.asp?catID=fd&nameID=TOLEDO
http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/isabel_toledo.shtml
http://www.luxlotus.com/lux_lotus/2005/10/luxlinks.html


Toledo Studio was established in 1984 by fashion designer Isabel Toledo and artist Ruben Toledo. Toledo Studio comprises clothing design, ad campaigns, hotel promotion and mannequin design.

Strongly anchored in Cuban culture yet highly individualistic, both approach their craft with passion. From her American upbringing, Association (FI Isabel gained an appreciation of machinery, practicality and comfort while retaining a love for traditional elegance. Ruben's irrational, instinctive approach to art fused with American popular culture explodes in playful, incisive and intensely surreal observations on fashion, beauty and life.

Toledo Studio's designs have been featured at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Mode Museum in Antwerp and in solo exhibitions at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.

Isabel and Ruben Toledo are two highly talented individuals working in synergy. Muse to her husband's sculpture, painting and illustration, Isabel Toledo conceives of shapes and structures to clothe the human body. Complementarily, Ruben Toledo's surreal view of life brings humor and unconventionality to her industrial world.

After decades of mutually inspired creative endeavor, the couple refuses to be categorized or assimilated by the establishment. An idiosyncratic figure in the American and European fashion world, Isabel stopped presenting bi-annual collections in 1998 after twelve years of intense production. Today she creates at her own pace, testing the results until they meet her standards of excellence, and furthering her investigations into concepts close to her heart. Effortless at first glance, her garments are actually painstakingly engineered to be fluid and comfortable and to feel familiar. Even the elaborate spinning helixes, suspended shapes and geometrical constructions are anchored with both pragmatism and poetry.

A multi-faceted artist, Ruben Toledo is the master of several media. His best-known work delights in the absurdity, audacity and charisma of the fashion world. Unlike many illustrators, he adds wit and perspective to the representation of the human figure.