Afaina de Jong is an architect and educator who works at the intersection of spatial design, research and art. She is the founder of AFARAI, an Amsterdam-based studio which challenges the boundaries of traditional architecture by taking an interdisciplinary and feminist approach to the city. Language, color, patterns and imaginaries play an important role in De Jong’s projects, which are often deeply connected to counterculture and to the social movements of underrepresented voices and communities.
Earlier this year, she launched the Embodied Restoration Lab, a design initiative that brings architects, technologists and thinkers together to explore the possibilities of ecological restoration and the underlying values that are tied to the systems and algorithms we use. De Jong is also the head of the Contextual Design MA department at Design Academy Eindhoven, and lectures regularly at other faculties like The Sandberg Institute.
With a background in arts and journalism, Dirk-Jan Visser is a documentary photographer, senior lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and an active participant in the cultural and political arena. As a co-founder of the New Horizon Initiative, he is interested in how innovative artistic approaches can be used to address ecological challenges. The initiative is inspired by the Rights of Nature movement and aims to visualise the different interests of non-human life in a landscape through the use of Artificial Intelligence. Through photography, stakeholder management and public affairs, its goal is to contribute to a governance model that recognises the interests of non-human life in organisational and political decision-making, thereby promoting inclusive representation.
This talk was recorded during WDCD Live Amsterdam 2024.