London-based, Portuguese architect Mariana Pestana, curator of the 5th edition of Istanbul Design Biennial, will be will be our new guest in WAC's Live Interview Series. The new session will be hosted by WAC's UK Reporter Dr. Hatice Ozhisar.

Mariana Pestana is the curator of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial with Sumitra Upham (Curator of Programmes) and Billie Muraben (Assistant Curator & Deputy Editor).

Organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV), the 5th edition of Istanbul Design Biennial will officially open to the public on October 15 and will continue until 2021 as an evolving program due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The Biennial will be held under the theme of Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one and Pestana will discuss the theme of the Biennial and its new format with the new ways of representations throughout the Istanbul Design Biennial.

Mariana Pestana, who is the third woman architect curating the Istanbul Design Biennial, after Beatriz Colomina with Mark Wigley for the 3rd edition of Istanbul Design Biennial and Zoë Ryan for the 2nd edition of Istanbul Design Biennial.

WAC's live interview series explore different themes decided by WAC Country Reporter or Country Editor in each session. 

Mariana Pestana. Image © Daniel Oduntan

Mariana Pestana is an architect and curator interested in critical social practice and the role of fiction in re-imagining futures for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis. 

She co-founded the collective The Decorators, an interdisciplinary practice that makes collaborative public realm interventions and cultural programmes, currently design fellows at Stanley Picker Gallery. 

Previously Mariana worked as a curator at the Department of Architecture, Design and Digital at the Victoria and Albert Museum and lectured at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Arts, and Royal College of Arts. 

Recently, she co-curated the exhibitions The Future Starts Here, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2018) and Eco Visionaries: Art and Architecture After the Anthropocene at MAAT (2018), Eco Visionaries: Towards an Interspecies Future at Matadero (2019), and a third iteration of the latter at The Royal Academy (2019). She curated Fiction Practice, the Young Curators Lab for Porto Design Biennale 2019. Pestana holds a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

WAC's live interviews are held as 20-30-minute sessions to deliver a quick glimpse of the current projects of the architect and the office and provide a fast-paced discussion on the architects' design philosophy.

See WAC's full program on this page. 

WAC Instagram Live Interview

Theme: Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one

Host: Dr. Hatice Ozhisar, WAC UK Country Reporter.

Date: Thursday, October 8th/ 11:00am (GMT) / 13:00pm (CEST) / 14:00pm Turkey Time. 

Venue: WAC Instagram