Creative Leaders

How to Navigate a Map of Questions: Artistic Practices in Times of Uncertainty

Bryan Boyer develops a practice that bridges strategic design, architecture, technology, and urban innovation, with a particular interest in how cities and institutions can learn, adapt, and respond to increasingly complex systems. His work explores the built environment not only as a physical reality, but as a network of decisions, policies, infrastructures, and social relationships that can be transformed through design. This perspective has shaped both his professional practice and his academic work, as well as his research on new ways of addressing contemporary urban challenges.

He is the inaugural Academic Director of the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit and the founding Academic Director of the Master of Urban Technology at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he also created the Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology. He is co-founder of the architecture and strategic design studio Dash Marshall and previously co-founded Helsinki Design Lab at the Finnish Innovation Fund. His publications include Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It (2026), Design for Social Innovation (2021), and Brickstarter (2013). He currently serves on the board of directors of Public Policy Lab in New York.

→ Wednesday, September 9; 17:00 h CDMX (UTC -6).