Greening the Industrial City Jury Panel

Buildner is excited to announce its jury for the Greening the Industrial City competition!

Amna Ansari, UltraBarrio
Juan José Castellón, RICE University in Houston, Basel and Barcelona-based xmade
Dalia Munenzon, One Architecture & Urbanism
Marcus Martinez, UltraBarrio
Kirby Liu, POST Houston

Amna Ansari is founding partner of UltraBarrio, an urban design and architecture practice with a central goal to shape cities to be more civic, sustainable, and generationally connected by design. Ansari’s intentional multidisciplinary background aligns architecture, urbanism, landscape, and technologies towards socially vibrant, equitable and enduring spaces. Her recent talks - 'Eco-Altitude', 'Covert Landscapes' and 'Flight, Flows and New Fields' anticipate the overlaps of public space with technology. Amna participated at the Aerial Futures think tank ‘The Next Frontier’ as a speaker and panelist speculating on the future of commercial space flight and its urban impacts among a select number of leaders in NASA and Houston Area Aviation. UltraBarrio’s content has been published in ULI Urban Land Magazine ‘Designing for the Driverless Age’ and ‘Imagining the Driverless City’, as well as featured in Fast Company - Co.Exist Futurist Forum. UltraBarrio’s research regarding the urban impact of mobility and technology, ‘Shuffle City’, a future vision for Houston, is among the source materials at NYU Rudin Center for Transportation and has been recognized at the Smart Cities panel at ABX Boston. UltraBarrio’s recent project ‘METRO: Transit Environment Programming Catalog’ won the AIA Houston Urban Design Award for unifying ambitions of sustainability, accessibility, and connectivity toward sites that blend ecology, safety, and equality with place making. Ansari’s method of actively processing a broad range of scenarios concerning urban strategies for the future has been recognized through exhibitions in Washington DC, Rome, Milan, and Boston. As a designer who has lived and worked in Shanghai, Vienna, Boston, and today Houston, her portfolio of architecture and planning projects has contributed to numerous AIA and ASLA design awards. Ansari has taught graduate and undergraduate architecture studios in Boston and Houston and looks forward to bringing her research into teaching.

 Juan José Castellón is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture at RICE University in Houston and Founding Partner at Basel and Barcelona-based xmade. He received his degree in architecture from ETSA Barcelona, an M.Arch. in Emergent Technologies & Design from the Architectural Association in London and his Doctor of Sciences from the Swiss Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. His research is focused on the implementation of contemporary material processes and structural systems in architecture, and on the integral and ecological design of building infrastructures.

 Dalia Munenzon has a decade of professional experience in architecture and urbanism, focusing on adaptive strategies and resiliency methods. She leverages experience in urban systems design, environmental planning, and architecture to work with local communities across scales towards resilient cities and urban environments.​ Munenzon serves as the Boston associate for One Architecture & Urbanism, leading the firm’s projects in the greater Boston area. Her work on resilience is focused on waterfront design and long-term strategic planning. She has led such high-profile, award-winning projects as the Climate Ready Boston Downtown, East Boston and Charlestown; Moakley Park Vision Plan; Peddocks Island Masterplan; Fourth Regional Plan, Triboro, Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Project; and the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project.​ Dalia received a Master’s in Architectural studies from MIT and a Bachelor’s in Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion Israeli Institute of Technology. Her undergraduate thesis, which looked at the future coastal cities, was awarded the Raiskin Award in 2012. Dalia has been a guest critic at Harvard GSD, MIT, UC Berkeley, CCA, Northeastern, Boston Architectural College, University of Pennsylvania, RISD, Wentworth Institute, and The Cooper Union. She hopes to carry forward her knowledge and experience to promoting healthy, inclusive and resilient cities in the 21st century.

 Marcus Martinez is a Partner at UltraBarrio where his experience in architecture and urbanism is dedicated to topics that foster resilient communities, repurposing infrastructure, and building types that relate to cycles of scarcity, surplus, and obsolescence. His lens on these cycles were shaped as a collaborator focusing on mobility at the MIT Media Lab Changing Places group.  There he was responsible for prototyping folding vehicle chassis, incentivized business plans and technological platforms that retooled an urban fabric. These efforts translated into numerous urban core projects in Boston, including the 2024 Olympic Plan – smart city blueprint.  His MIT master’s thesis on urban infrastructure has been put into practice on 14 concepts and completed campus projects at the University of Houston, Sam Houston State University, and Prairie View A&M.  His work in established communities like the East End, Near Northside are immersed in culture, legacy, and site performance. He has been the recipient of numerous awards for his design efforts like the preservation award for the Ironworks in the East End, the repurposed Houston freeway – The Pierce Skypark, and recently state and local AIA awards for his design and engagement work in Gulfton. Marcus received his master’s in architecture and urbanism from MIT and has been a thesis instructor at Boston Architectural College, held academic appointments at MIT, and today is a lecturer and studio instructor at the University Houston. He has been an invited critic at Rice University, Wentworth Institute, UBC SALA, and CU Denver.

Kirby Liu is a real estate developer focused on creative projects that have city wide impacts. Kirby led the development of POST Houston, the OMA-designed adaptive reuse of an abandoned post office in downtown Houston.  A Fulbright Research Scholar, Kirby previously worked as a leveraged finance banker before studying architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Kirby graduated with distinction from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature.