SHIFT Housing Summit: Afternoon Session

French 2D is a studio founded by Jenny French (MArch Harvard GSD, BA Dartmouth) and Anda French, AIA (MArch Princeton, BA Barnard). The practice focuses on uncommon housing types, as seen in their work on cohousing, compact living, and adaptive reuse. They also design civic installations and exhibitions that use the domestic to bring people together for familiar rituals in unfamiliar contexts—through furniture, textiles, and spatial environments. Notable projects include Bay State Cohousing in Greater Boston, the Kendall Square Garage Screens in Cambridge, and the traveling Dinner Cozy series. The studio has received numerous recognitions, including a P/A Award and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard. In 2024, they were nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Their work has appeared in Domus, AZURE, PLOT, Metropolis, Monocle, and The Architect’s Newspaper, and has been exhibited at MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and UMASS Amherst. Jenny is an assistant professor in Practice at the Harvard GSD and Anda is a Visiting Lecturer at the Princeton SoA.

Juan Du has lived and worked in North America, Europe, and Asia, and founded her Hong Kong-based office, IDU, in 2006. She is currently professor and dean at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and has previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Hong Kong, where she remains an honorary professor and directs the Urban Ecologies Design Lab (UEDL). Through research, education, and design, Du explores architecture’s capacity for positive social and ecological impacts. She regularly collaborates with resident groups, social organizations, and public institutions on multi-scale and long-term projects advocating for communities struggling with rights to the city and adequate housing, including migrant workers, indigenous villagers, unhoused, refugees, and asylum seekers. Her work has been featured and exhibited internationally, and she has curated multiple exhibitions, including the 2010 Hong Kong Pavilion “Quotidian Architectures” at the Venice Biennale, and “Housing an Affordable City” at the 2011 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. Her book, The Shenzhen Experiment (Harvard University Press), received the 2020 Book of the Year Award for Interdisciplinary Research by ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research. Du is a recognized scholar on China’s architecture and urbanism and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, Wired, and Nature. 

Kwong Von Glinow is an architecture practice founded in 2017 by Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow. The studio transforms familiar elements into innovative yet accessible designs, spanning homes, cultural spaces, workplaces, and public environments. Notable works include a rooftop gallery for a Chicago greystone, a landmark renovation in Highland Park, and a masterplan for the Chinese American Service League in Bridgeport. Their practice has earned recognition from the Rice Design Alliance, the Architectural League Prize, and the Graham Foundation, as well as multiple AIA awards. Their work combines conceptual ambition with broad public relevance.

MASS Design Group was founded on the understanding that architecture’s influence reaches beyond individual buildings. MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society) believes that architecture has a critical role to play in supporting communities to confront history, shape new narratives, collectively heal and project new possibilities for the future. We are a team of over 120 architects, landscape architects, engineers, builders, furniture designers, makers, writers, filmmakers, and researchers representing 20 countries across the globe. We believe in expanding access to design that is purposeful, healing, and hopeful. In 2021, The American Institute of Architects honored MASS Design Group with the 2022 AIA Architecture Firm Award. In 2020, MASS was named the Architecture Innovator of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, for its origins in healthcare and commitment to architecture as a medium for healing. In 2019, Architect Magazine ranked MASS fourth in its list of Top 50 Firms in Design and in 2017, MASS was awarded the National Design Award in Architecture, given each year by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.