Image Credit: Steve Blunt

Depani is an architect and artist and is currently Placemaking Lead at the London Borough of Waltham Forest, guiding the quality of forthcoming development and design-led policy. Depani has worked for a range of practices and taught at a number of schools of architecture. In 2017, Depani was awarded a Churchill Fellowship (in conjunction with the British Council) for an international study of community-led public space, learning lessons for London. Depani was selected for the first cohort of Public Practice, a pioneering initiative working to improve the quality and equality of everyday places.

Image credit: Christopher Hawthorne

Hawthorne is Chief Design Officer for the city of Los Angeles, a position appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. In this role he develops new initiatives and provides design oversight related to architecture, planning, housing policy, urban design, and public art across the city. Prior to joining City Hall, he was architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2018. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, The New Yorker, Architectural Record, Harvard Design Magazine, and many other publications. Hawthorne is Professor of the Practice, with an appointment in the Department of English, at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, where he directs the Third Los Angeles Project, a series of public conversations about architecture, urban planning, mobility, and demographic change in Southern California.

Catherine Slessor is an architectural critic, editor and writer. Currently she is a contributing editor to the Architectural Review and was its editor between 2010 and 2015, the first woman to lead the magazine after 13 men. She originally studied architecture at the University of Edinburgh and was in private practice before defecting into journalism. She also has a Masters degree in Architectural History and Theory from the Bartlett School of Architecture and has written for numerous publications, including the Observer, Icon, Bauwelt and Dezeen. In 2016 she was awarded an MBE for services to architectural journalism.