ANNUAL SUMMIT

MAY 9, 2026

MOMA

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Centro de Artesanía Chaki Wasi_La Cabina de la Curiosidad_001_©Francesco Russo - Cabina Curiosidad.jpg

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Join us at MoMA for our unmissable all day convening of architecture's most inspiring now, near and next.

Date
May 09, 2026
11AM - 6PM EDT

Location
MoMA, NYC
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The World Around is proud to collaborate with the Department of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art to present its annual Summit, a flagship convening dedicated to the now, near, and next of contemporary architecture and design. Now in its seventh iteration, the Summit has become a vital international platform, bringing together architects, designers, artists, thinkers, researchers, and community leaders from across geographies and disciplines. Together, they share urgent ideas, emerging practices, and built work that meaningfully expands the field’s social, cultural, and ecological impact.

Through a dynamic program of keynote talks, short presentations, and cross-disciplinary conversations, the Summit is a year of architecture in a day; a space for exchange across scales and contexts. The program highlights new modes of making, partnering, and organizing, with a focus on practices that challenge extractive systems and propose more just and resilient ways of living. Across the day, speakers and participants explore questions of equitable futures, climate intelligence, and cultural imagination, engaging projects that range from objects and materials to buildings, landscapes, and cities.

Thanks to the generous support of our partners and Circles members, attendance at the Summit is free and admission is first come, first served. The World Around Circles members receive reserved preferred seating, along with tickets to the afterparty.

Program

The World Around Summit 2026 Program (pdf)Download

VIP SEATING FOR CIRCLES MEMBERS

Schedule

11:00-13:00

SESSION ONE: SEEDING TIME

Our first session presents extraordinary practitioners whose work aims to renegotiate the relationship between the built environment and the natural world. Landscape has become one of architecture’s most generative territories and we are thrilled to present practitioners from artists, designers and architects working at scales that range from the seed to the city.

Gabriela Carrillo

Gabriela Carrillo started her eponymous studio in 2019, as a collaborative and interdisciplinary space for architectural work.

Piet Oudolf

Piet Oudolf is a Dutch garden designer, nurseryman, and author, renowned for his distinct approach to planting.

Tropical Space

Tropical Space is an architecture studio based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Peggy Weil

Peggy Weil is an artist and designer whose practice spans large-scale public art installations, videos, and interactive works.

Sara Zewde

Sara Zewde is the founding principal of Studio Zewde, a landscape design, urban design, and public art practice based in New York City.

Mohamed Salem Mohamed Ali

Mohamed Salem Mohamed Ali is a Sahrawi farmer, artist, and environmental practitioner who connects caring for the land, creativity, and helping his community stay strong.

Break

14:30- 16:30

SESSION TWO: KEEPING TIME

The question of what is protected and what recedes into the past is inseparable from the hierarchies of power, notions of belonging, and our systems of value. As architects have gained awareness of the environmental impacts of the building industry, the discipline has been forced to confront those questions with renewed urgency. In this session we travel from questions of restitution in Senegal to community centre in Ecuador, to the heart of a spectacular revisiting of one of the most important public spaces in Paris.

Mariam Issoufou

Mariam Issoufou is the founder and principal of architecture and research practice, Mariam Issoufou Architects.

La Cabina de la Curiosidad

Marie Combette and Daniel Moreno Flores are founding partners of La Cabina de la Curiosidad, a Quito-based design and research practice.

Daniel Moreno Flores

Daniel Moreno Flores is an architect and founding partner of La Cabina de la Curiosidad, a Quito-based design and research practice.

Søren Pihlmann

Søren Pihlmann is the founder of Copenhagen-based pihlmann architects.

Róisín Heneghan

Róisín Heneghan is co-founder of heneghan peng architects, a landscape, urban planning, and architecture practice with offices in Dublin and Berlin.

François-Xavier Gbré

François-Xavier Gbré is a photographer who lives and works between La Rochelle, France, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Bas Smets

Bas Smets is a landscape architect with a background in civil engineering and architecture.

Break

17:00-18:00

SESSION THREE: HIGH TIME

Housing is perhaps architecture’s most tested claim to social purpose, and its most visible point of failure. Our final session of the day is conceived as a civic forum, a sustained exchange on what a genuinely livable New York might look like, and what it would take to build one.

Michael Kimmelman

Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic for The New York Times. and the founder and editor at large of Headway.

Alejandro Aravena

Alejandro Aravena is partner and executive director of Elemental, a socially motivated architecture practice based in Santiago, Chile.

Tatiana Bilbao

Tatiana Bilbao founded her eponymous studio in 2004 with the aim of integrating research, community-based design, and responsible construction.

Leila Bozorg

Leila Bozorg is the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning in New York City, where she leads citywide housing and land use strategies that guide New York City’s growth and affordability agenda.

PROJECT GALLERY

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Roble 700 © Tatiana Bilbao Estudio