Els is an urban designer, researcher and lecturer at the Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam. She carries out research into new organizational structures for innovative urban processes and how these structures play a role in the transition to a sustainable built environment. She is also interested in how decentralized circular approaches can provide technical and societal solutions at a global and local scale. Here, active involvement of citizens, datafication and digitalization (or the ‘smart city’) and a just and sustainable city take a central position. Els holds a PhD from the TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. The title of her thesis was ‘Privatisation of the Production of Public Space’.

Mo Smit is an architect and works as a lecturer and researcher within the Chair of Architectural Engineering at the Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. Together with colleagues and students, she studies and develops solutions for a circular built environment, where she focuses on the innovation of bio-based construction methods and processes. As a result of her activities in Indonesia, she developed a passion for regional architecture, self-build communities and bio-based materials. Recently she initiated Bouwtuin in the Netherlands: cooperative action research that focuses on the use of natural building materials from the region.