Nerea Feliz is an Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor for Interior Design at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Feliz’s research encompasses both scholarly and creative activities with a sustained focus on public space and an emphasis on inclusivity. Situated at the intersection of architecture, interior design, and interior urbanism, her work challenges disciplinary boundaries while investigating the role of design as a mediator between us, the public spaces we occupy, and pressing cultural and political questions within an expanded notion of inclusivity that often extends to non-human species.

Nerea Feliz holds a Masters and Bachelor degree in Architecture from the Politecnica University of Madrid, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura (ETSAM). Before joining UT, she taught for four years at the University at Buffalo's School of Architecture and Planning. Prior to moving to the US, Feliz worked for Foster & Partners (2004-06 & 2008-09) and Zaha Hadid Architects (2006-08) among others. As a registered architect in Spain and UK, she has developed projects from early design stages to detail and construction phases in a number of ranging scales and programs: from mixed-use office buildings to a new terminal in Heathrow Airport and a temporary market in Spain. In 2010 she founded Nerea Feliz Studio, an emerging design and creative research office.

Her projects and writing have been featured in publications including The Plan Journal, Architect Magazine, Ground Up, Platform, International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Design, Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture Journal, The Architect’s Newspaper, and urbanNext. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at a range of venues: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Bentway, Space P11, SXSW Eco, Matadero Madrid, and multiple academic institutions such as Toronto Metropolitan University and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, among others.

Nerea Feliz teaches courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her teaching has received numerous honors. She has been a member of the Society of Teaching Excellence at The University of Texas at Austin. She was awarded the School of Architecture Outstanding Teaching Award for studio instruction in 2019 and the 2020 Teaching Excellence Award from the Interior Design Educators Council.

Ji Yoon Bae is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Kent State University’s CAED. He is an architectural designer and researcher finalizing his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, where he develops "Homeostatic Architecture"—an interdisciplinary framework that integrates design with biology, materials science, and thermodynamics.

His work explores biologically informed, self-regulating systems that foster feedback loops between humans, buildings, and their surrounding environments. By translating biological mechanisms into climate-responsive building systems, he seeks to enhance human thermal comfort while mitigating ecological impact. Prior to Kent State, he was a researcher at UPenn, specializing in computational design, building science, and materials experimentation. He holds an MS in Matter Design Computation from Cornell University and an M.Arch from Syracuse University.

Zherui (pron. zee-ray) Wang is a designer, building technology researcher, and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Kent State University. His work focuses on devising architectural methods for cooling and climate-response design for extreme heat while being mindful of material use. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, his PhD research at the University of Pennsylvania explores the design integration of structural form-finding and building thermal mass performance, informed by architectural geometry, materials science, and life cycle thinking. He is a co-author of Hydroculus, an evaporative and radiative cooling roof prototype that was exhibited in the Venice Architecture Biennale and received a Holcim Foundation Award for Sustainable Design and Construction. Previously, Wang was an Academic Professional Researcher at CHAOS Lab in Princeton. He has practiced in design roles at Barkow Leibinger Architects and served on the design faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Pratt Institute, and State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was named the 2020-21 Reyner Banham Fellow. Wang holds a BArch from Pratt Institute, a post-professional MArch and a Media & Modernity certificate from Princeton University, and a graduate certificate in Energy Policy from the Penn Kleinman Center.

Ankur believes in storytelling through design, drawing from regional context, culture, and hand-built processes to highlight the tactility and grace of local materials and artisanal skills, and advocates adaptive reuse as a starting point for sustainability in architecture. Some of the Studio’s significant projects in his domain include the Godrej Trees Project in Vikhroli—all adaptive reuse interventions within the legacy of an industrial site, the Anant Art Gallery in New Delhi, the Taj Guras Kutir in Sikkim, The Oberoi Vindhyavilas at Bandhavgarh, and an upcoming boutique 15-key resort at Havelock Island in the Andamans.

Leena Cho is Kinder Foundation Distinguished Chair and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and co-founding director of Arctic Design Group. Her research and design work focus on landscapes at the frontline of climate extremes, where rapid environmental change reshapes territory, material practices, and ways of knowing. She is co-editor and author of Design and the Built Environment of the Arctic (Routledge 2025) and Mediating Environments (AR+D 2018), and co-leads a multi-year interdisciplinary traveling studio program, Permafrost Futures, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and UVA Environmental Institute, among others. Her current work investigates cultural landscapes of scientific practices in the North Slope of Alaska.