Michael Ford is the designer and activist known as The Hip Hop Architect. Born in Highland Park, Michigan the son of a minister, Michael was raised to be inquisitive and question the world around him to find deeper truth. Early on, he found his passion for design and music, expanding it into a practice of architecture and design through the lens of Hip Hop culture. This led to his founding of The Hip Hop Architecture Camp®, a camp that positions Hip Hop Culture as a catalyst to introduce architecture and design to underrepresented youth. He’s also working with some of Hip Hop's greatest names as he leads the design of The Universal Hip Hop Museum in The Bronx.

Danny Giannella, Tammer Hijazi and Jeffrey Renz are the trio behind Bower, a contemporary furniture and product design studio. With a focus on mirrors, they explore perceptions of depth, light and self. Through a free–thinking, experimental process, Bower aims to bring unexpected objects and environments into people's lives, with reflections taking center stage. They believe the mirror is the everyday object most closely related to our consciousness.

Legendary art director Giulio Cappellini first fell in love with cars, then studied architecture, and took the family furniture business into the stratosphere with his bold curatorial vision and knack for spotting international talent. His true gifts may lie in his instinctual approach to risk taking, a dedication to longevity over market trends, and his truly familial approach to building relationships. With passion and curiosity for miles, his gaze is eternally optimistically pointed toward the future.

Industrial designer Tomek Rygalik of Studio Rygalik shares the story of his work developing Circula, a series of functional public furniture sculptures designed to host interdisciplinary discourse around the urgency of the climate crisis. In the face of a global pandemic, this project has taken on another dimension of purpose in the potential to assist recovery and reconnection in the aftermath of isolation and social distancing.

Artist and designer Misha Kahn grew up hustling his lakeshore Minnesotan neighbors with tin foil wrapped baked goods, sewing clothes and hanging with exchange student stragglers. A year of guzzling weird culture in Brussels set him on a path to study furniture design in school. Now, at the young age of 30, his career has snowballed and earned him a reputation in the art world as an exciting and provocative force working at the intersection of furniture and sculpture. Sewing and tin foil still included.

Furniture and interior designer Claudia Washington grew up in El Salvador during the civil war. It was not safe for her to play outside so she spent her days clipping pictures from architecture magazines and redesigning her bedroom. In college, she predicted whom she would marry from seeing a work of his art. Now, Claudia and Harry Washington are designing work for international clients and championing design in El Salvador through a design biennale, education, artisan collaborations and economic growth.

Furniture & interior designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance moved from Paris to the “super boring” French countryside in his youth where he spent all day on his bicycle inventing new worlds in his mind. After a brief attempt at becoming a movie star, he found design. He came home from a trip to Morocco with both a baby, and a job designing a high profile restaurant (not with the same people.) Now based in Lisbon he’s designing for global brands and fixing problems through emotions and moments of sincerity.

Furniture designer Jeff Martin grew up in Vancouver, BC struggling with punctuation and hiding in a dilapidated abandoned boat. He spent his teenage years expressing himself through skateboarding and snowboarding. Following a devastating accident and subsequent slow recovery, he found his voice through writing and reconnected to his body through physical labor and making. Now he’s using his voice and hands to build community, as well as beautiful, inventive furniture. Also, he’s thinking of doing mushrooms (as furniture!). 

Interior designer and star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, Bobby Berk grew up in the rural south, feeling like an outsider. Before coming out as gay, he struggled with anger, depression and tension with his religious family. After running away from home and coming out, he made a break for Denver, and then NYC. Always designing opportunities for himself, he found his way to e-tailing, then retailing and the Bobby Berk Home brand was born. Oh! He used to be the singer of a Christian rock band called His Voice.

Gregg Buchbinder, Chairman of iconic furniture brand Emeco, grew up in southern California, on a “long leash” and with a constant longing to be surfing or sailing. That love of the ocean infused him with a very strong sense of sustainability as his driving purpose. The story of Emeco began long before Gregg—in 1944 with the 1006 Navy Chair—but their destinies have been intertwined for generations. They have been through hardship and tragedy together, and have arisen through miraculous transformations.