The MAK Center for Art and Architecture Los Angeles at the Schindler House launched the MAK Urban Future Initiative Fellowship in 2008.

The mission of the Urban Future Initiative Fellowship is to promote meaningful exchanges between cultural thinkers from diverse nations in order to cultivate visionary conceptions of the urban future.

Responding to the challenges of urban environment both locally and globally, the MAK Center seeks out Fellows who engage in interdisciplinary practice and who are committed to forward-thinking approaches to urban issues.

UFI Fellows are invited to Los Angeles for two months. While here, Fellows pursue a research topic related to urban phenomena. The MAK Center works closely with Fellows, helping to connect them to the city through its architecture. Fellows are introduced to members of the many creative, scholarly, and educational communities throughout southern California and encouraged to develop dialogue with these individuals and institutions.

During this focused period of deep inquiry, Fellows are challenged to consider the complexity of “the city” in its relationship to the built environment, growth and migration, economics, politics, gender, and the natural environment.

The MAK UFI Fellowship is funded by a major grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

2008/09 UFI Fellowship Jury:

Reflecting the interdisciplinary and wide-ranging interests annunciated through the Urban Future Initiative, a distinguished jury of local and international scholars was called in January 2008 to select the seven UFI fellows for the initial UFI cycle. The members of the jury panel were:

• Sam Assefa, Architect, Director of Policy for the Department of Planning, Chicago
• Victoria Beard, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, University of California Irvine
• Sylvia Lavin, Author, Professor of Architecture, University of California Los Angeles
• Qingyun Ma, Architect, Shanghai and Dean of University of Southern California School of Architecture, Los Angeles
• Kimberli Meyer, Director of MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles
• Peter Noever, CEO and Artistic Director, MAK Vienna, Austria
• Aradhana Seth, Filmmaker and Designer, Bombay and New Delhi, India

UFI 2008/09 Jury. Kimberli Meyer, MAK Center Director and Sam Assefa, Architect

2008/2009 UFI Jury presentations