Executive Board
Rodrigo Castriota
Rodrigo Castriota is a researcher and practitioner working at the intersection of regional planning, territorial development, and regenerative land systems. He holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Development from CEDEPLAR/UFMG, where his research on urbanisation, regional development, and mining projects in the Brazilian Amazon received the ANPUR Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation. He was an ERC-funded postdoctoral fellow at the Politecnico di Torino and has been affiliated with research initiatives linked to ETH Zurich, the Singapore-ETH Centre, and partner institutions in Europe and North America. His publications address regional development, bioeconomies, and urban–rural continuums. He is the founder and CEO of Clima Café de Floresta, which develops and implements agroforestry-based land transition projects with farmers and cooperatives in Brazil.
Nikos Katsikis
Nikos Katsikis is an urbanist whose work examines the geographies of urbanisation beyond the city. He is Assistant Professor of Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, and is affiliated with the Critical Environments research group at TU Delft and the Urban Theory Lab at the University of Chicago. His research develops the concepts of operational landscapes and hinterglobes to analyse the territorial configurations of food, energy, minerals, water, and waste that sustain urban metabolism, using geospatial analysis and geovisualisation as critical practices. He holds a Doctor of Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2016). He co-edited New Geographies 06: Grounding Metabolism, and his work has appeared in journals including Antipode and Planning Theory.
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin is an architect, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of urban design, landscape architecture, and the environmental sciences and humanities. She is Full Professor of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy, where she leads the Spatial Ecology Programme at the Kalundborg campus. She is an affiliated researcher at TU Delft, where she was previously Associate Professor of Urban Design and Critical Theory. Her work develops situated approaches to the design and planning of landscapes exposed to environmental fragility, extreme weather, and climate change, with projects in the North Sea, the Arctic, Brazil, South Africa, and India. She leads the Water4Change programme (NWO-WOTRO) and directs the UNDP Archipelago Project in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the São Paulo Architecture Biennale, and the IABR.
Milica Topalović
Milica Topalović is an architect and researcher working on the relationships between cities and their territories. She is Associate Professor of Architecture and Territorial Planning at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich. Her research and teaching examine territories beyond the city, including hinterlands, countrysides, and landscapes of production and extraction, combining territorial research with design. She previously worked at ETH Studio Basel and led research on the hinterland of Singapore at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory.