Arna Mackic

Arna Mackic is an architect and founder of Studio L A and is head of Architectural Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. She specialises in reconstructional architecture. Mackic was awarded the ‘Maaskantprijs’ for Young Architects 2017. According to the jury, Arna is ‘a unifying voice, who heals the wounds of the past, without glossing over the scars’.

The architect works for RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances), an Amsterdam-based design studio working at the intersection of architecture, arts, and philosophy. In 2013, she was awarded a talent development scholarship from the Promotion Fund Creative Industry. She used it to do research on the role of architecture during the turning points in the history of the Balkan, during and after World War II. It resulted in the publication ‘Mortal Cities & Forgotten Monuments’.

She researches current societal issues – the quest for identity, contradictions between populations, mechanisms of in- and exclusion and refugees – and reflects on it by word, writings, and design.

She is a speaker at Setting the Urban Agenda of Tomorrow on Wednesday, June 20.