Nils Larsson is an architect and Executive Director of the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE), an international non-profit organization. He represents the international partners (CIB, iiSBE, UNEP and FIDIC) in coordinating the regional and global SB conferences and is the key organizer of the Sustainable Building Challenge, a related project to showcase high performance buildings at SB conference events.

He is also the principal developer of the SBTool, a system for assessing the sustainability performance of buildings and is active in several international and private-sector contracts related to sustainable technologies. During the 1990’s he developed and managed a demonstration program for high-performance buildings for the Government of Canada, which resulted in the first public adoption of the integrated design process (IDP).

Alberto Foyo’s extensive academic involvement has become over the years a seamless extension of his practice. His working methodology, based on a multidisciplinary and critical approach, stresses and builds on the positive and restorative virtues of not compromising. Alberto Foyo is active internationally as professor, guest critic and lecturer. He is professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, planning, and preservation at Columbia University and at the School of Architecture of the City University of New York. He has been a visiting professor at The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, at UNITEC School of Architecture in Auckland, New Zealand, and at the Fachochschule in Munich, Germany.

Since 2007 he conducts a permaculture design-build atelier in the Brazilian Amazon basin in conjunction with the Munduruku tribe. He is founding partner and director of Postopia, a think tank focused on clean up policies and cultural sustainability in the highly deteriorated urban environment of the ex Soviet republics. He is co-founding member of the Compostela Institute, an independent international architecture academic program in Spain. He is the architecture department director of Recycled China, a new research and design-build firm based in Beijing that focuses on the manufacturing of architectural materials made with discarded ceramic and discarded metals.

He was recently awarded an Honorary Masters Honoris Causa by the School of Civil Engineering and Architecture in Kharkov, Ukraine.

Ana María Durán is an Ecuatorian architect, researcher, educator and writer. She cofounded the architecture and design studio Estudio A0 in 2002 in Quito. She currently works as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Arts in the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Quito.

During her career, Ana María served as a visiting professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In 2010, she developed a south American open research network (The South American Project), which led her to obtain a Loeb Fellowship by Harvard University.

As a writer, Ana María Durán edited the book Beyond Petropolis: Designing a Practical Utopia in Nueva Loja between 2006 and 2011; her essays have been published in numerous magazines (Harvard Design Magazine, RADAR, AULA, GAM, TRAMA, Clave) and books (Thinking Practice, Restructuring from Within by the Post Post Post catalogue); and she published her first poetry book in 2010, titled Cuerpojo Azul.

She conducts her research in the fields of remote territories urbanization, such as the Amazonia and the Galápagos Archipelago; the study and visualization of the infrastructural integration process in south America and also the discovery of the inspiration that gives birth to the contemporary design in specific regions.

Dr. Luis Valenzuela has a PhD in Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University; he is an architect and MsC in Architecture by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is also a Fullbright Fellow, as well as nominee for the Manny Grant Fellowship by Graham Foundation and the Luksic Fellowship of David Rockefeller’s Center for Latin-American Studies at Harvard University.

Since 2011 Dr. Valenzuela has worked as Director of the Center of Territorial Intelligence (CIT) and professor of Adolfo Ibáñez University’s Faculty of Design. He has also worked as Subdirector of the Design School and as professor for the Master in Innovation Program of the School of Business of the same institution. Since 2013 he’s an associate researcher at the Center of Conflict Studies and Nacional Cohesion, leading research projects centered in inequality, crime and territory. During 2014 and 2015 he was visitant professor at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University, where he gave several lectures on territorial intelligence.

From 1997 to 2011 he worked as professor for the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies, acted as Director for the City Observatory, and as Executive Director of External services for the Architecture, Design and Urban Studies Faculty of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. During this time his research focused on sustainable urban design and vulnerable spaces in the urban context. He’s an affiliated researcher at the Institute of International Urban Development (IIUDS), Cambridge, USA –previously known as Center for Urban Development Studies at Harvard University.