May al-Ibrashy

Founder and chair of Megawra-Built Environment Collective and coordinator of Athar Lina Initiative

May al-Ibrashy is founder and chair of Megawra-Built Environment Collective and coordinator of Athar Lina Initiative, a participatory initiative that conserves the heritage of al-Khalifa in Historic Cairo and conceives of it as a driver for community development. She is also co-founder of BIAS-AME, an independent educational program focusing on the Built Environment run in partnership with 10 Tooba and Mansour for Architecture and Conservation. She is a Prince Claus Fund Impact Award awardee for 2022 and a Divia Award finalist for 2023. She holds a BSc in Architecture from Ain Shams University and an MA and PhD in Art, Architecture and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

William Mann

director, Witherford Watson Mann Architects

William Mann is a director of Witherford Watson Mann Architects, an award-winning practice noted for their work with existing buildings.

Based in London, WWM’s work focuses on the physical continuity of buildings through the social evolution of cities and institutions. Their projects of transformation include the Stirling Prize-winning Astley Castle, a house built from within the ruins of a twelfth-century castle; a new theatre for Nevill Holt Opera within a seventeenth-century stable block; and the transformation of the Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House.

WWM is a thinking practice, collaborating with artists, writers and sociologists as well as engineers and contractors. Mann himself has contributed chapters to a number of architectural journals and books, and written for Casabella, Drawing Matter and Archis, on the sometimes awkward relations of buildings to cities and old to new. His writing in The Architectural Review includes a Retrospective on Belgian architects Robbrecht en Daem and a reflective essay on drawing in the design process: ‘sketching lets you think with the handbrake off,’ he writes.

Rossana Hu

Founding partner, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office

Rossana Hu is a founding partner at Neri&Hu Design and Research Office and chair of the architecture department at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.

Based in Shanghai, Neri&Hu Design and Research office is known for adaptive reuse projects including the transformation of a former Japanese Army headquarters in Shanghai into a hotel, for which the practice won the 2010 AR Emerging Awards, and the conversion of a Beijing textiles factory into the offices of a pastry brand. Their projects are contextual and varied, not defined by a single style but drawing from the global perspectives and cross-disciplinary approaches of their diverse staff. As well as architecture, the practice works on installation, furniture, product and branding projects.

Alongside her design practice, Hu has been deeply committed to architectural education. As well as her position as department chair in Pennsylvania, she has taught and lectured at universities including the University of California, Berkeley, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Yale School of Architecture, the University of Hong Kong and Tongji University, Shanghai.