How do we design with the earth, rather than against it? The first session of Summit 2026 gathered practitioners whose work aims to renegotiate the relationship between the built environment and the natural world. 

Landscape has become one of architecture’s most contested and generative territories. Once seen as peripheral, landscape is now understood as the ground on which urgent questions of climate, culture, and resilience must be resolved. 

The presentations in this session respond to that call through different approaches: the deep time of ice cores and geological strata; the seasonal transformation of perennial gardens; the hydrological cycles of floodplains; the ingenuity of desert agriculture. Across these contexts, a shared conviction emerges: that the complexities of place—of its ecology, its histories, and even its vulnerabilities—are not constraints for design, but a vital resource.

Featuring Mohamed Salem Mohamed Ali, Gabriela Carrillo, Sara Zewde, and Peggy Weil, and chaired by Beatrice Galilee, founder and executive director of The World Around, this town hall was recorded at the end of the first session of The World Around Summit 2026, a full-day program dedicated to Architecture’s Now, Near & Next.

Taking place at The Museum of Modern Art, the program was co-organized by Beatrice Galilee, and Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art.