Open Session #21: Hosted by Xiaoxi Chen, Lily Chishan Wong, and André Santos

Xiaoxi Chen is an architect and educator engaging in architecture as a medium to expand critical cultural, spatial, and political practices. Her work seeks to affirm political possibilities across disciplines. She is the Associate Director of the Masters of Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University, where she builds curriculum, public programming, and pedagogical frameworks for architecture, climate, technology, and embodiment. She has designed exhibitions for the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, DeYoung Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others. 

Lily Chishan Wong, is an architect and assistant professor at the University of Miami in Florida whose work engages with plant life as interlocutors in design projects. Her research, practice, and teaching are devoted to the legacies of colonialism, urgencies of climate resilience, and futures of urban living. With an upbringing in British-colonial Hong Kong, she explores these topics through integrating different research methods to create spaces, systems, performances, media, and texts. Her recent work was exhibited at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, and Lisbon Architecture Triennale. She received the World Architecture Festival 40 Under 40 North America Award in 2025. 

André Santos is a Brazilian designer and architect whose practice bridges interdisciplinary research, critical computation, and speculative design from marginal positions within the Global South. As a 2025 William Kinne Fellow, he is developing Click-Farming, a visual research and exhibition tracing the shadowy infrastructures of social media in Brazil. Previously, he worked as a senior architect at ELEMENTAL Chile, contributing to participatory design and territorial research across Latin America.