Symposium Speakers
Suzie Attiwill
Suzie Attiwill, keynote speaker, is Professor in Interior Design, School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her creative practice research experiments with concepts of interior and interiority in relation to contemporary conditions of living, inhabitation, subjectivity and pedagogy through a practice of designing with a curatorial inflection attending to arrangements (and re-arrangements) of spatial, temporal and material relations.
Amy Roehl
Amy Roehl earned an MFA in Interior Architecture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and spent a decade in Chicago working for a multi-disciplinary firm before her teaching career. She works currently as a design educator and Interior Design program head at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Her research interests include the investigation of cultural forces impacting design of the built environment and perception of the profession, application of embodied practices to traditionally cerebral | analytical design processes, and community-engagement projects.
Image: Amy Roehl
Image: Emma Byrnes
Grace Ong Yan
Grace Ong Yan is Assistant Professor of Interior Design at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She is an architectural historian and theorist whose work mines the interdisciplinary connections of design with media, technology, and business histories. Her research examines the contradictions and tensions of modern design’s engagement with capitalism. Grace is the author of Building Brands: Corporations and Modern Architecture, and co-editor of Architect: The Pritzker Prize Laureates in their own Words. She has also published and presented on subjects ranging from Asian architects Wang Shu and Minoru Yamasaki to the role of women, design, race, and labor at Avon Products, Inc.
Image: Leslie Williamson
Lindsey Krug
Lindsey Krug is a designer and researcher based between Chicago and Milwaukee, where she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Through the lens of the architectural user as a body in space, her work focuses on how design solidifies and reinforces bodily taboos and hierarchies into built form, and seeks alternative futures for architectural inhabitants.
Image: Lindsey Krug
Marcin Kedzior
Marcin Kedzior is a dancer, musician, and designer. He is currently an Assistant Professor (LTF) of Interior Design at The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University. He is obsessed with literary constructions of space, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, the legacy of Black Mountain College, and intangible heritage. He is a founding editor of the journal Scapegoat that connects design to art and activist practices. This journal has been exhibited at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, NYC, and the Venice Biennale. His design work has received the Governor General’s Award, National Urban Design Award, and the Canadian Architect Award.
Drawing: Will Fu
Najia Javaid
Najia Wazir Javaid is an architect currently enrolled in the Master of Interior Design program at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. Originally from Pakistan, she acquired her undergraduate degree in Architecture from National College of Arts in Lahore where she closely studied Subcontinental architecture and construction techniques.
Professionally she worked at Architectural Systems in Lahore and hosted TV shows about architecture, interior design, and sustainable energy solutions in her native country. Her interests include multidisciplinary design, historic preservation, passive design, lighting design and South Asian history, culture, and architecture. For her master’s project her research is in Public Interiority with a focus on movement, flow, and space appropriation. She is also the recipient of the IES Philadelphia Scholarship for the year of 2022.
Image: architecturalanatomyblog.wordpress.com
Rana Abudayyeh
Rana Abudayyeh is an Assistant Professor and the Robin Klehr Avia Professor of Interior Architecture at the College of Architecture and Design, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Masters of Architecture degrees from the University of New Mexico. Abudayyeh’s work gauges several converging trajectories rooted in advanced digital making, representation, and social justice. She investigates interior systems and social forces that define resilient environments, catering to cultural identities through her teaching, research, and service. Abudayyeh is a licensed architect in her native country, Jordan, where she is currently researching interiority and displacement.
Drawing: Rana Abudayyeh