Studio Ossidiana, founded in Rotterdam by Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti, is an experimental practice working fluidly across architecture, visual arts, and design. Known for its poetic approach and deep engagement with materials, landscapes, and cultural narratives, the studio produces projects that range from architectural installations to urban strategies, often blurring the boundaries between disciplines. Their work reflects an interest in how built form can frame new relationships between humans, nonhumans, and the environments they share.

They will be joined in conversation by Dr. Mariana Pestana, an independent curator whose practice explores design as a critical and imaginative tool for contemporary life. As chief curator of the 2020 Istanbul Design Biennial, Empathy Revisited, Pestana foregrounded the role of design in cultivating care, interconnectedness, and alternative futures at a moment of global crisis. Her ongoing work examines fiction as a method for rethinking design in the face of accelerating technological change and ecological precarity, opening up spaces where speculation and social practice intersect.

Together, Studio Ossidiana and Dr. Pestana will reflect on how architecture and design can respond to urgent planetary conditions, while also offering new modes of storytelling, collaboration, and collective imagination.