BK Talks: 7 billion at home

Nelson Mota
Associate Professor of Architecture at Delft University of Technology
He writes and lectures regularly on the topics related with housing, citizens’ participation and architectural education. At the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment-TU Delft, Nelson is the leader of the research group Global Housing and coordinator of the Global Housing educational program. He is production editor and member of the editorial board of the academic journal Footprint and the book series DASH- Delft Architectural Studies on Housing. Together with Dick van Gameren, Nelson co-edited the book Global Housing: Dwelling in Addis Ababa, published by JapSam Boks in 2020.

Francesco Chiodelli
Francesco Chiodelli is associate professor of urban and legal geography at the Università degli studi di Torino, where he is the director of OMERO – Interdepartmental Research Centre for Urban Studies. His research deals mainly with different manifestations of illegality and informality in the urban sphere, with a specific focus on housing questions. He investigated also the spatial dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem and the adverse effects of spatial regulation. His papers have appeared in international journals such as Urban Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Political Geography, Progress in Planning, Planning Theory, Town Planning Review, Urban Geography. He has published Shaping Jerusalem. Spatial planning, politics and the conflict (Routledge, 2017) and co-edited The Illicit and Illegal in Regional and Urban Governance and Development. Corrupt Places (Routledge, 2018).

Alessandro Frigerio
Architect, PhD, urban and landscape designer, he is a Post-doc Researcher and Adjunct Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, also teaching at the Master Design for Development: Architecture, Urban Planning and Heritage in the Global South. His research investigates the processes and spatial correlations of urban regeneration and sustainable urban development in its inter-scalar framework, with a focus on integrated territorial planning, urban and public space design, urban architecture. He has a special interest in African urbanism and he has been involved in projects in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, cooperating with international organizations and agencies, NGOs, private investors and local governments.
 

Dick van Gameren
Dick van Gameren has been the dean of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment since 1 April 2019. Dick van Gameren studied Architecture in Delft and graduated cum laude in 1988. For a long time, he ran his own architecture firm and in 2013 became a partner with Mecanoo Architecten in Delft. Over the years he has realised numerous projects, ranging from exhibition designs to urban-development master plans. Examples of his designs include residential buildings in IJburg and the Eastern Docklands area of Amsterdam and in the Westelijke Tuinsteden neighbourhood of the city. His design for the Dutch Embassy in Ethiopia won him the prestigious Aga Khan Award in 2007. It is just one of the many awards he has received. Recently, he won the Rijnlandse Architectuurprijs with his design for the Langebrug student housing project in Leiden. He has been Professor of Dwelling at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment since 2006, and chairman of the Architecture Department for ten years; his responsibilities include managing an international teaching and research network aimed at tackling the problem of affordable housing in rapidly expanding cities in Asia and Africa.

Lesley Lokko
Lesley Lokko trained as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture and holds a PhD in Architecture from University of London. She is the founder and director of the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana, an independent postgraduate school of architecture and public events platform. She was the founder and director of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg (2014—2019) and the Dean of Architecture at the Bernard & Anne Spitzer School of Architecture (2019—2020). She is the editor of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000); editor-in-chief of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture. In 2004, she made the successful transition from academic to novelist with the publication of her first novel, Sundowners (Orion 2004) and has since followed with twelve further bestsellers, which have been translated into fifteen languages. She is a founding member of the UN-Habitat Council on Urban Initiatives; a member of the 17th International Jury of the Venice Architecture Biennale and a trustee of the London-based Architecture Foundation.

Laura Montedoro
Laura Montedoro (Bari, 1967), architect and art historian, is an associate professor of Urban Planning in Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), where she has taught Urban Planning and Urban Design since 1998. Deputy coordinator of the Architecture and Urban Design course at the AUIC–School of Urbanistic Architecture and Construction Engineering, also head of the SAT– Academic Internships Office; co-director of Politecnico di Milano’s DAStU Design for Development Second Level Master Degree. Member of the PAUI (Architectural, Urban and Interior Design) PhD board and of the PIMI Master and PhD scientific program at the Faculdade de Arquitectura e Planeamento Fisico of Mozambique’s Universidade Mondlane