Saturday, February 21, 2026 at 2:00 PM
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
An International Convening of Architecture and Design The Hammer Museum presents *In Focus: Transformation*, a free public program curated by **The World Around**, the global platform for architecture and design, and the **Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain**. This latest edition of The World Around’s acclaimed thematic program series spotlights visionary architects and designers who are shaping a more sustainable future. As landscapes are scorched, coastlines eroded, and communities displaced in a world warming as a result of human activity, the built environment becomes a critical site of response. This program examines how designers, thinkers, and artists confront a world in flux—ecological, social, and political. Through inspiring talks and conversations, global leaders in architecture and design will share innovative approaches to urgent climate challenges, from urban flooding to nature loss. *In Focus: Transformation* positions design as a medium of positive change: a tool to respond to trauma, restore landscapes, resist extraction, serve the vulnerable, and imagine more equitable ways of inhabiting the planet. In a time of compounding uncertainty, the series invites discussion on the landscape of momentous change before us, and how designers can claim agency within it. This program is free but RSVP is required as seating is limited. RSVPs will open for this program on **Thursday, January 15, **at **1:00 PM** **Alice Bucknell** Alice Bucknell is an artist, writer, and educator based in Los Angeles. Their work explores the affective dimensions of video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relationships, and forms of knowledge. Bucknell is interested in the ecological dimensions of play as an embodied technology that dissolves binaries between human and nonhuman; natural and synthetic intelligence; and self vs world. They have exhibited internationally, including at Centre Pompidou (Paris), Kunsthalle Praha (Prague), Ars Electronica (Linz), Transmediale (Berlin), Arcade Seoul, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Singapore Art Museum and Serpentine Galleries (London). In 2025 their video game *The Alluvials* was acquired by SFMOMA in San Francisco, making it the fi rst video game to enter the museum’s permanent collection. A recipient of the 2025 Creative Capital Award and former CERN/CC resident, they teach world-building, game design, and the philosophies of technology at SCI-Arc and UCLA (Los Angeles). **David Barragán** David Barragán leads Al Borde, an architecture studio based in Quito, Ecuador, with Pascual Gangotena, Maríaluisa Borja, and Esteban Benavides. Emphasizing local context and process, the studio’s work has been recognized with prestigious awards such as the Bancastato Swiss Architecture Award 2024, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2013, and the Schelling Architecture Prize 2012. Al Borde’s work has been presented at exhibitions and venues including the Venice Biennale (2025 and 2016), the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2023), Building Optimism at the Carnegie Museum of Art (2016), Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015), and Réenchanter Le Monde at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in France (2014). The studio members are active in academia, teaching design studios in graduate and undergraduate programs, and leading workshops and delivering lectures at universities worldwide, including Columbia University, ETH Zurich, Tongji University, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). **Ximena Caminos** Ximena Caminos is a biocultural placemaker who pioneers cultural-ecological models where art, science, and climate innovation meet. She is the founder and artistic director of Reefline, a new typology where art becomes marine habitat and cities learn to coexist with their oceans. She is also president of BlueLab Preservation Society, and chief creative officer of HoneyLab Creative. Caminos has chaired major arts and design cultural masterplans across the Americas. She was the artistic visionary planner for The Underline, founder and chair of Faena Art, global executive creative director and partner of the Faena Group, chief curator of the Faena Arts Center, and founder of the Faena Prize for the Arts. She has served on the New Museum Leadership Council, and is a founding member of the Guggenheim’s Latin American Circle, and an advisor to Art Basel Cities. Caminos is an XPrize ambassador, and a recipient of the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Award and the Arts Champion Award. **Teddy Cruz & Fonna Forman** Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman is a research-based urban and architectural design practice based at the University of California, San Diego, investigating borders and migration, informal urbanization, emergency housing, bioregional climate resilience, civic infrastructure, and public culture. The studio’s work has been exhibited across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; M+ Hong Kong; and the Venice Architectural Biennale. Their work has received the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, and the Vilcek Prize in Architecture, among others. The studio’s practice has been documented in recent monographs, including *Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks* (MIT Press, 2022) and *Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up* (MIT Press, 2023). **Walter Hood** Walter Hood, a multidisciplinary designer from Charlotte, North Carolina, is globally recognized for his contributions to art, landscape architecture, urbanism, and research. He founded Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California, in 1992 and currently serves as its creative director. Hood’s passion for landscape and urbanism stems from the field’s broad, democratic scope, which allows for experiences beyond the constraints of architecture alone. By infusing African American cultural arts into his design philosophy, he has established a distinctive voice that reshapes spaces to meet contemporary needs while honoring their layered histories. A former professor at UC Berkeley and a former Harvard educator, Hood is the author of *Black Landscapes Matter* (University of Virginia Press, 2020) and has received numerous accolades, including the 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2024 Vincent Scully Prize, and, most recently, the 2025 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture. **Kotchakorn Voraakhom ** Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a leading voice in the field of climate resilient design, specializing in interventions within dense urban contexts in Southeast Asia. She is the founder of Landprocess, a Bangkok-based landscape architecture firm, and the Porous City Network, an organization committed to increasing urban climate resilience in Southeast Asia. Voraakhom is globally recognized for contributing critical green infrastructure and climate-adaptive projects to the urban development of Bangkok, including the design of Asia’s largest urban rooftop farm at the city’s Thammasat University. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the UN Climate Action Award, and has been named on lists including TIME 100 Next, BBC 100 Women, and Bloomberg Green 30. She is a TED Fellow and appointed member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Commission on Nature Positive Cities. Voraakhom holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and an honorary doctorate from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Her practice is dedicated to creating urban landscapes that support the health of both natural systems and public life. **Julia Watson** Julia Watson is a designer, educator, and author whose work advocates for the integration of traditional and Indigenous knowledge into climate resilient design. From an early age, she engaged with First Nations ecological perspectives, developing a deep understanding of how human and natural systems co-evolve, a worldview that guides her work. She is the author *Lo–TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism* (TASCHEN, 2019) and L*o–TEK Water: A Field Guide for TEKnology* (TASCHEN, 2025), and the leader of the global Lo–TEK movement and the field of TEKnological Urbanism. Her work is deeply collaborative, co-created with Indigenous authors and communities. Watson founded the Lo–TEK Institute, advancing nature-based education, and the Lo–TEK Office of Intercultural Urbanism, guiding interdisciplinary teams in culturally grounded, place-based design where the landscape is treated as the foundational technology of the built environment. **Kulapat Yantrasast** Kulapat Yantrasast is the founder, managing principal, and creative director of WHY Architecture. Born in Bangkok, Yantrasast opened the WHY Architecture workshop in Los Angeles, California, in 2004. In the years since, he has acquired a reputation as one of the art world’s preeminent architects, designing genre-expanding spaces which focus on the human impact of the arts. Recent major museum and cultural projects include the renovation of the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art at the Louvre, the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dib Contemporary Art Center in Bangkok, the Ilmi Center in Riyadh, and the Contempo museum in Manila. Currently, Yantrasast serves as principal architect for New Delhi’s Yuge Yugeen Bharat national museum. **Beatrice Galilee** Beatrice Galilee is a London-born, New York-based writer and curator, and is the founder and executive director of The World Around, the global platform for architecture and design. She is the author of *Radical Architecture of the Future*, published by Phaidon in 2021, and between 2014–2019 she served as the first curator of contemporary architecture and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Galilee served as chief curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale; co-curator of 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale; co-curator of 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Between 2010–2012 she launched and co-directed The Gopher Hole, an experimental exhibition and project space in London. With global experience of design, architecture, publishing, communications and brand-building, Galilee provides cultural, design and architectural advisory support to architects, designers, developers and institutions. **Béatrice Grenier** Béatrice Grenier is a curator, writer, and editor based in Paris. Currently director of strategic projects and international programs at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Grenier curated in 2025 an exhibition in Venice presenting Jean Nouvel’s architectural project for the Fondation Cartier on the Place du Palais-Royal in Paris, as part of the collateral program of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. She also co-curated *Exposition Générale*, the inaugural exhibition dedicated to the Collection of the Fondation Cartier in its new spaces. She was formerly content strategy consultant for Google Arts and Culture in China, and between 2015–2019, she oversaw the realization of large-scale institutional projects by internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang. Grenier serves as the Paris desk editor of ArtAsiaPacific. She is the co-author of *Tashkent. A Modernist Capital* (Rizzoli International Publications, 2024) and the author of *Architecture For Culture: Rethinking Museums (Rizzoli* International Publications, 2025). Through her work and writing, Grenier has been interested in architecture as what allows art to exist in space, or take root in the urban and non-urban landscape. **Zoë Ryan** Zoë Ryan is director of the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to taking up this post in January 2025, she was Daniel W. Dietrich, II director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Since joining ICA in 2020, she focused on expanding the institution’s role as a launchpad for contemporary art, research, and ideas across disciplines; developing a strong institutional culture; and building community around ICA’s program as a resource within Philadelphia, nationally, and internationally. Prior to ICA, Zoë was John H. Bryan chair and curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she set the vision for collecting and exhibiting modern and contemporary architecture and design as expanded fi elds of practice that are in dialogue with the socio-political conditions of the time. Her research explores how the arts can be a catalyst for social and cultural change and she is an active lecturer and panelist at national and international institutions. **Ticketing: **This program is free but RSVP required as seating is limited. The box office opens at 1PM. Your seats will be assigned to you when you pick up your tickets. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. Attendees can choose to be in the Billy Wilder Theater, or in the Bay Nimoy Studio where a live high definition simulcast will stream the event, and food and beverages are allowed. Please note that RSVP does not guarantee entry to the Billy Wilder Theater as seating is limited. **Member Benefit: **Members receive priority ticketing until 15 minutes before the program. Additionally, Hammer Members and The World Around Circles members can choose their preferred seats (subject to availability). [Learn more about membership.](https://web.archive.org/web/20230528005718/https:/hammer.ucla.edu/support/membership) **Parking: **Self-parking is available under the museum. Rates are $8 for the first three hours with museum validation, and $3 for each additional 20 minutes, with a $22 daily maximum. There is an $8 flat rate after 6 p.m. on weekdays, and all day on weekends. **Press:** If you are a member of the press and are interested in attending and covering the program, please email Scott Tennent at [stennent@hammer.ucla.edu](mailto:stennent@hammer.ucla.edu) for accommodations. [Read our food, bag check, and photo policies.](/know-before-you-go) [♿ Accessibility information](/visit/accessibility)