From simple greenhouses to botanic facilities, and from data centers to automated interiors, never before in history has architecture produced so many interiors for the non-human, challenging disciplinary notions on tectonics, light, comfort and entire regulatory frameworks. Once designed for and with the human, contemporary interiors have instead become exponentially complex materializations where the politics of our present moment are played out. Ultimately, who are they for?
Interior Ecologies is a critical framework developed within the Master of Arts in Interior Architecture (MAIA) program at Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève). It examines how interior architecture engages with climate change, resource circulation and multispecies coexistence alongside posthuman and more-than-human design perspectives. Rather than treating interiors as autonomous spaces, it calls on us to rethink them as complex ecologies in which human and nonhuman actors are entangled across broader planetary scales.
This roundtable brings together voices from HEAD – Genève, MoMA, and Columbia GSAPP to reflect on how interior architecture can contribute to new ecological approaches to design, research, and professional practice.
The event will also include a presentation of the scenographic installation developed by MAIA for Assembly, the Swiss presence at Climate Week NYC. Employing scaffolding and dismantlable systems as an embodiment of circular architecture, the installation demonstrates principles of reuse, adaptability, and reversibility, staking its claim as an active ecological agent within the space.
Program
- 5:45pm – Doors Open
- 6:00pm – Welcome Remarks
- 6:10pm – Panel Discussion
- 7:30pm – Networking
- 8:30pm – End
iCal / Outlook
Event start time
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New York
6:00PM
Speakers
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Bio
Paola Antonelli
Senior Curator,
Architecture & Design,
MoMAPaola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her work considers design various practices within a multidisciplinary framework, highlighting its connections with technology, society, art, and the environment. Besides curating exhibitions, she also produces a renowned public series, the MoMA R&D Salons, that demonstrates the potential of museums as R&D departments for society. The Instagram platform, book, and podcast Design Emergency, which she co-founded with design critic Alice Rawsthorn, is an ongoing investigation on design’s power to envision a better future for all.
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Bio
Philippe Rahm
Principal, Philippe Rahm architectes
Studio Critic, HEAD – GenèvePhilippe Rahm is a Swiss architect who graduated from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and holds a doctorate from the University of Paris-Saclay. His firm, Philippe Rahm architectes, is based in Paris. His projects include Taichung Central Park in Taiwan, which opened in 2020 (with Mosbach Paysagistes). He is the author of the books Climatic Architecture and The Anthropocene Style, as well as the book Natural History of Architecture, to be published in 2026. He has taught at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, HEAD – Geneva (HES-SO), and ENSA Versailles. He has participated in numerous biennials, notably those in Venice (2025), Tbilisi (2024), Madrid (2024), Chicago (2023), and Tallinn (2022). In 2025, he is co-curating the Île-de-France and Saint-Étienne biennials. He is a Knight of the Order of Cultural Merit of Monaco and has received the Silver Medal from the French Academy of Architecture.
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Bio
Mireia Luzárraga
Co-founder, TAKK
Assistant Professor,
Columbia University GSAPPMireia Luzárraga is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Core I sequence at Columbia University GSAPP. She has previously been Dean’s Visiting Professor at GSAPP (2023), Kengo Kuma Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo (2024), and Master Tutor at Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Barcelona (2018-2022).
She is founder and principal of TAKK Architecture, a research-driven design office based in Barcelona and New York. Her work focuses on investigating how design can catalyze egalitarian societies through the incorporation of feminism, queer ecologies, and posthuman studies into spatial practices.
Her work has received the Design Vanguard award 2024, the Best Archilover Project award in 2023, the FAD Awards 2023, the COAM award 2022, and the Temps de les Arts award 2022. She has also been a finalist for the Archdaily’s Best Building of the Year awards in 2024, a finalist at the XII Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, a finalist in the ROOM 2023 awards and a finalist in the FAD awards in 2023 and 2019.
Mireia Luzárraga’s work is featured in some of the most prestigious architecture museum collections worldwide, including the FRAC Center Val-de-Loire, the Vitra Design Museum, the Mak Center for Art & Architecture in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat, and the Disseny Hub in Barcelona, and spans both the public and private spheres. Among her notable public clients are the Musée Cantonal de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains in Lausanne, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno IVAM, and the Centro de Arte Santa Mónica in Barcelona. In the private sphere, she has undertaken projects for Hermès, Moncler, Vitra, and Swatch.
Luzárraga and her work frequently appear in specialized forums both nationally and internationally, including the Venice Biennale 2023 (Slovenia pavilion), 2021 (Spain pavilion), 2014 (Spain pavilion), the San Sebastián Biennale 2023 and 2017, Design Miami 2023, Salone del Mobile in Milan 2023, the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022, the Roma Architecture Festival 2022, the Orléans Biennale 2022, the Maia Biennale in Porto 2019, the Rabat Biennale 2019, and the Oslo Triennale 2016.
Luzárraga has also lectured at various institutions, including the Kyoto University in 2024, the Royal Academy of Arts in 2024, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT in Boston in 2023, the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio in 2023, the University of Applied Arts die Angewandte in Vienna in 2023, the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, and the ETH in Zurich in 2022.
Her work is widely published both nationally and internationally, with notable appearances in Arquitectura Viva, Frame, Domus, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Plot, and AMC. In mainstream press, she has been featured in articles in El País, El Mundo, El Periódico de Catalunya, and Diari Ara.
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Bio
Javier Fernández Contreras
Professor & Head of Department,
Space Design/Interior Architecture,
HEAD – GenèveJavier Fernández Contreras (Granada, 1982) is an architect, associate professor and head of the Space Design/Interior Architecture Department at HEAD – Genève. His work explores the relationship between architecture, representation and media, with a specific focus on the role of interiors in the construction of contemporaneity. He holds a master’s degree in Architecture and a PhD in Architectural Theory (summa cum laude) from ETSAM at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
Contreras is the director of several academic and research programs, including MAIA (Master of Arts in Interior Architecture), Switzerland’s first MA program in the field, which explores contemporary interiors at the intersection of space, ecology and media; Scènes de Nuit, a research platform investigating the relationship between night and space while questioning architecture’s daylight paradigms; The Interiors of Social Media, a project that examines the impact of social media platforms on 21st-century architecture, focusing on interior spaces as sites of commodification, display and mediatization; and The Future of Humanitarian Design (HUD), a program that integrates design and political science to jointly address the growing challenges of humanitarian action, in collaboration with the Geneva Graduate Institute, the University of Copenhagen and the EssentialTech Centre at EPFL.
Contreras regularly publishes in a variety of specialized books and journals. He is the author of The Interiors of Social Media (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2026; Puente Editores, 2026), which was included in the central exhibition of the 2026 UIA World Congress of Architects in Barcelona; Manifesto of Interiors: Thinking in the Expanded Media (HEAD – Publishing, 2021; Puente Editores, 2022), which was selected for the XVI BEAU—Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism; and The Miralles Projection (AR+D, 2020). He is the co-editor of Nothing About Interior Architecture (Set Margins’, 2025), winner of the 2025 AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers award; A Nocturnal History of Architecture (Spector Books, 2024); Intimacy Exposed: Toilet, Bathroom, Restroom (Spector Books, 2023); and Scènes de Nuit: Night & Architecture (Ediciones Asimétricas, 2021). His critical essays have been published in a variety of specialized publications, including monographs dedicated to the works of Marie-José Van Hee and India Mahdavi, as well as journals such as e-flux Architecture, PLOT, KoozArch, Burning Farm and Drawing Matter.
His work has received numerous international awards and recognition. In 2024, Contreras served as president of the jury for the FAD Awards’ Thought and Criticism category, Spain and Portugal’s most important prize in architectural theory. Recent distinctions for projects realized with HEAD – Genève include the 2026 Red Dot Award for Inclusive Tables, developed with the Clair Bois Foundation in Geneva; a 2025 Swiss Arc Award nomination for De/Construction – Stories of Applied Reuse; a 2025 Créateurs Design Award nomination for 2084: A Diorama of the Future, which was presented at Alcova during Milan Design Week 2024; and the 2023 FRAME Award (Set Design of the Year) for Playing Fields, a collaboration with the European Heritage Days and Servette Football Club. Earlier independent awards include first prize in the 2020 Concéntrico Architecture and Design Festival competition for the Prismarium project, and first prize in the 2019 F’AR Lausanne curatorial competition for the Scènes de Nuit exhibition.
Moderator
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Bio
Marc Streit
Head of Arts & Creative Industries
Swissnex in Boston and New YorkAs Head of Arts and Creative Industries based in New York City, Marc is responsible for Swissnex’s activities at the interface of art and the fields of education, research, and innovation. He sees the arts as an opportunity to engage diverse communities around Swissnex’s thematic focus areas in a tangible, playful, and accessible way. Marc is the former Deputy Artistic Director of the contemporary dance center Tanzhaus Zürich and founder of the zürich moves! festival for contemporary practice in the performing arts. He studied curating at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
Assembly
This event is part of Assembly, the main Swiss stage at Climate Week NYC 2026. As world leaders gather in Midtown Manhattan, Swissnex assembles Swiss and global voices – from private sector innovators and researchers to artists and policymakers – in the East Village for three days of communal climate thinking and action. Assembly speaks to deliberation and democracy – the idea that communities must collectively define their futures – as well as the ongoing, creative, improvisational process of constructing those futures from the pieces of our present.
Partners
This event is presented in collaboration with the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève).
