Climate as a Design Challenge

Kathrin Volk is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Design at Detmold School of Architecture and Interior Architecture at OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts. She has been Chair of Landscape Architecture and Design since 2010 and Vice Dean for Research and Internationalization since, and co-founder of the study program Urban Planning. Kathrin Volk is a founding member of the urbanLab research group for urban studies at Detmold School. She is currently leading the Horizon 2020 research project „URBiNAT – Healthy corridors as drivers of social housing neighborhoods for the co-creation of social, environmental and marketable NBS.“ As a practitioner, she frequently judges urban design competitions, and works as a consultant with numerous landscape architecture practices.

Kaja Kühl is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she coordinates the Hudson Valley Initiative and teaches graduate urban design studios with a focus on equity and the climate crisis. She is the founder of youarethecity, a people-centered design and research practice in New York and a cofounder of Design For Six Feet, an initiative to amplify creative voices in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. She is a certified planner and a fellow of the Urban Design Forum and the Design Trust for Public Space.

Marc Rieser studied urban planning (M.Sc.) at the TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences and at TONGJI University in Shanghai. He previously completed a degree in landscape architecture (B.Eng.) at the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts. He is part of MUST Urbanism: a Cologne and Amsterdam based office, which mainly focuses on the interface between climate and the city. In 2019 he won the international EUROPAN competition with his concept 'the productive region', in which he presented the synergies between the built city, mobility, social and ecological sustainability.

Einat Lubliner received her M.Sc. in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University GSAPP, where her main focus was working through different scales, exploring city systems, and incorporating social and ecological aspects in the design process of public spaces. She received her B.Arch from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and participated in an exchange program at TUdelft in the Netherlands. Moving between cities and exploring different realities and challenges is a major part of developing her agenda as an Architect and Urbanist. Einat is currently an Urban Designer at BIG, and volunteers as a part of an advocacy group with the community and Transportation Alternatives to a more connected and safer Eastern Queens Greenway.

Graduate of TU Berlin’s Historical Urbanism (M.A.) program, Benjamin is passionate about the arts, urbanism and in particular the relationships between the two, e.g. residency programs, public culture or memorials. He has been working as a cultural manager and administrator, currently as program officer at the new transatlantic project space “1014” in New York City. Over the years, his work has also focused on media and public relations. Benjamin graduated from the University of Oldenburg with a B.A. and has professional experience in South Africa, Germany and the United States.