Sumayya Vally is the Founder and Principal of the studio Counterspace. Her design, research and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and contested territories – finding speculative histories, futures, archaeologies, and design languages, to reveal the invisible.

Vally is presently based between Johannesburg and London, and currently serves as World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Artistic Director of the first-ever Islamic Arts Biennale. In 2020/1, she became the youngest architect ever to design a Serpentine Pavilion. Valley was also named one of the TIME100 Next 2021 most influential leaders of innovation, an honor which recognizes global voices primed to shape the future. She was the only architect listed among other prominent names in world society. 

Susan Meiselas is a documentary photographer based in New York, well-known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has served as President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography. Her photographs are featured in a variety of North American and international collections, and have been shown in numerous museums and solo exhibitions. Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to present, was recently exhibited at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Jeu de Paume; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo; the Kunst Haus Wien and C/O Berlin.

Meiselas has received numerous awards, including the Rencontres d’Arles First Prize Women in Motion Award; the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize; the Hasselblad Foundation Prize; and the Robert Capa Gold Medal.

Suzanne Deal Booth has long been committed to the recognition, preservation, and conservation of visual arts and cultural heritage. She has worked at several notable institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris; The Kimbell Art Museum; The Menil Collection; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the J. Paul Getty Trust. In 1998, she founded the Friends of Heritage Preservation (FoHP), a private charitable group dedicated to protecting and preserving the cultural and artistic heritage of our world for generations to come. FoHP has successfully participated in and contributed to over 80 preservation and conservation projects in 18 countries, with a focus on both tangible and intangible heritage.

 

She has established two significant prizes: the annual “Suzanne Deal Booth Rome Prize for Historic Preservation and Conservation” at the American Academy in Rome, launched in 2003, and the biennial “Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize”, launched in 2016. The latter was later expanded through a partnership with the FLAG Art Foundation. Deal Both’s newest professional endeavor is establishing, reimagining, and cultivating Bella Oaks, a historic wine estate in Napa Valley. In addition to her emphasis on cultural preservation and viticulture, Deal Booth is an advocate for social justice, immigration reform, education, and gender equity.

Christian Louboutin established his business in the heart of Paris in 1992, first with a collection for Women, followed a few years later by a Men’s collection, both recognizable by their signature red sole. 2014 welcomed the launch of Christian Louboutin Beauté. The company now counts more than 150 points of sale worldwide. Passionate about arts and crafts from all over the world, Louboutin's love for the Egyptian pharaonic culture led him to become a major funder of the Colossi of Memnon in Luxor, included on the World Monuments Watch in 1998 and 2004.

Dr. Sourouzian has served as Director the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project in Luxor since 1998. A member of the German Institute of Archaeology and of ICOMOS Armenia, she has worked in Egypt since 1974, taking part in archaeological missions of the Centre Franco-Égyptien at Karnak, the Swiss Institute at the Temple of Merenptah Thebes, the German Institute of Archaeology in Dashur and Gurna, the French Mission in Tanis, and the French Institute in Karnak-North. She has reassembled statue groups in the Egyptian Museum Cairo and realized several reassemblies and statue joins in temples and museums.

Sourouzian studied in Paris where she obtained a diploma of Art History from the Ecole du Louvre and a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Sorbonne. She also studied languages at the Ecole des Langues Orientales, and is specialized in Egyptian Art, with a focus on Egyptian sculpture. Author of books, articles, and essays on Egyptian Art and Archaeology, Sourouzian is also a co-author of Catalogues on Egyptian Art. She has given lectures at numerous universities and was repeatedly named the W. Kelly Simpson Guest Professor at the American University in Cairo.

Thomas Heatherwick is one of the UK’s most prolific designers, whose varied work over two decades is characterised by its originality, inventiveness and humanity. Defying conventional classifications, Thomas founded his studio in 1994 to bring together architecture, urban planning, product design and interiors into a single creative workspace. Working across multiple scales, locations and typologies, Heatherwick Studio has developed into a team of 200 makers and inventors with no signature style. Led by human experience rather than any fixed dogma, the studio creates emotionally compelling places and objects with the smallest possible climate shadow.

From their base in London, the studio team is currently working on over 30 projects in ten countries, including Toranomon-Azabudai, a six-hectare mixed-use development in the centre of Tokyo, the new headquarters for Google in Silicon Valley and London (in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group) and Airo, an electric car that cleans the air as it drives. The studio has also recently completed Little Island, a park and performance space on the Hudson River in New York; the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Coal Drops Yard, a major new retail district in King’s Cross, London. Thomas’ forthcoming book, Humanise, will be published by Penguin in 2023.