Mariana Pestana is an architect and independent curator interested in critical social practice and the role of fiction in design for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis. Pestana is a member of the collective The Decorators, an interdisciplinary practice that makes collaborative public realm interventions and cultural programs. She was the curator of the fifth Istanbul Design Biennial titled Empathy Revisited: Designs for More Than One (2020), Eco-Visionaries at MAAT, Lisbon (2018) and then Matadero, Madrid, and Royal Academy, London (2019), and The Future Starts Here at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2018). Pestana gained a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture. She was previously a curator at the Department of Architecture, Design and Digital at the V&A and has lectured at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Arts in London, among other universities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Portugal.