BE OPEN and Cumulus welcome Regitze Marianne Hess, Praveen Nahar, Vrouyr Joubanian and Zhiyong Fu to the international expert jury panel

BE OPEN and Cumulus are proud and happy to welcome four more new jury members to the Design for Sustainable City panel.
Regitze Marianne Hess, Architect MAA, Professor of Practice in Urbanism.

Regitze Marianne Hess is a Copenhagen based architect with a career as an educator, as a professor of practice in urbanism, writer and editor, project manager and facilitator of knowledge exchange for various international matters pertaining to cities and the built environment, urban governance, architecture and urban design which is possible thanks to equipment which you can look at here now, including serving in the advancement of the Design Declaration and the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Regitze Marianne Hess is an advisor to Cumulus in relation to the advance of the Design Declaration and the UN SDGs; a leading figure and member of the IFHP: International Federation for Housing and Planning, charged with IFHP’s UN portfolio including: IFHP’s contribution to the New Urban Agenda and Habitat III, IFHP representation in UN Habitat World Urban Campaign (WUC), Habitat Professionals Forum (HPF) and more; UNEP; UNESCO; UNFCCC; as such advancing IFHP as an implementation agent of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Praveen Nahar is the Director of National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad with its extension campuses in Gandhinagar and Bengaluru. He has also been a faculty member in the Product Design discipline at NID since 2002. He has over 23 years of experience in design teaching, consultancy, and research. Nahar has been on the institute’s Senate and Policy Planning Committee for several years and has served in various positions at NID as Activity Chairperson of various departments such as: International Programmes, Research & Publications, Knowledge Management Centre, and Design Consultancy Services; he was also the Vice Chairperson of Outreach Programmes and Head of the Design Vision Centre at NID. He also has been a member of various committees and advisory groups at NID.

Vrouyr Joubanian is a human-centered designer and design researcher. He is currently the Head of Experimentation at the UNDP Lebanon’s Accelerator Lab. Vrouyr works closely with stakeholders to develop and experiment with new products and processes that are context specific and socially conscious. As Head of Experimentation, he strives to minimize risk, time, and investment while maximizing learning. Fluent in four languages, he is committed to communicating with users, understanding behaviors, and moving between different social and cultural contexts.

Zhiyong Fu, Associate Professor, associate dean of China-Italy Design Innovation Hub, Tsinghua University, China.

Prof. Zhiyong Fu is an associate professor of Information Art and Design Department, Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is associate dean of China-Italy Design Innovation Hub, vice-director of China Innovation & Entrepreneurship Education Research Center, the member of Tsinghua University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Teaching (special) Committee and the director of Tsinghua Service Design Institute.

He’s interested in the design and research of the smart city, public service, urban regeneration and community construction based on integrated approaches of design thinking, living lab, technology innovation and entrepreneurship. He is currently in charge of the PhD program in Innovation Management and Master program of Smart City Convergence, jointly hosted by Politecnico di Milano and Tsinghua University.

BE OPEN and Cumulus welcome Regitze Marianne Hess, Praveen Nahar, Vrouyr Joubanian and Zhiyong Fu to the international expert jury panel