Plenary Speaker

Daniel Hewett

Executive Director for Research and Partnered Academic Programs, Rhode Island School of Design

Daniel Hewett is an architect, teacher, and currently the Executive Director for Research and Partnered Academic Programs at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Over the last several years, RISD’s collaborative partnerships have offered unique access to the transformative impact of extended design inquiry to organizations operating in an environment of systemic complexity and uncertainty. Recent partners including Nike, LEGO, NASA, Cessna, the World Economic Forum, US Special Forces, Microsoft, Chanel, and Johnson & Johnson, and now Infosys and its diverse range of partners. He is a frequent speaker on the strategic seeding and enhancement of enterprise-level creative cultures.

Mr. Hewett has held teaching and research appointments at The Boston Architectural College, Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Architecture and MIT, where he lectures in the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies. He is a frequent critic at design schools in the US and abroad whose own teaching and research explore potential interactions between infrastructure and cultural systems and in rapidly changing cities. He is the founder and director of URBANFRAME, a non-profit organization mobilizing individuals to design and pilot catalytic interventions in response to inefficiencies in complex urban systems. His practice includes strategy, planning, and adaptive reuse, as well as new residential and commercial commissions. Mr. Hewett studied at the Graduate School of Architecture at Rice University where his thesis, “Architecture and the Productive Implications of Pause” examined the societal implications of informal design and construction in several colonias on the outskirts of Progresso, Texas.