Our World in Design: Immortal Spaces
April 16, 2026 | 9 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Location: High Museum of Art
Registration Required
Limited scholarships available. Please email info@ourworldindesign.com for more info.
Our World in Design: Immortal Spaces is a one-day design summit, bringing together change-makers and thought leaders from across disciplines—from art and architecture to neuroscience and prison reform—to explore the spaces that make us human, the legacies we will leave behind, and the future we can build together.
Organized by architect Michael P. Murphy and hosted by the High Museum of Art and the Georgia Tech School of Architecture, the summit will feature more than two dozen speakers in conversation throughout the day.
Participants include architect Marlon Blackwell, artist Hank Willis Thomas, former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia Tech president Ángel Cabrera, neuroscientist Susan Magsamen, lawyer and professor Andrea Armstrong, museum director Kristy Edmunds, and cellist and composer Joshua Roman, alongside many others.
As we explore new frontiers of inhabitation and culture, spaces and their design matter more than ever. Our World in Design: Immortal Spaces examines the spatial politics and practices of space making—and the urgent questions of why architecture remains at the center of them all as authorship, mortality, and the meaning of space continue to shift around us.
Through a series of interdisciplinary conversations, the summit reflects on how design shapes human life, memory, and the built environments that will carry our stories forward.
Please visit ourworldindesign.com for more information.
Speakers
Michael Arad — Partner, Handel Architects; Designer, 9/11 Memorial & Emmanuel Nine Memorial
Andrea Armstrong — Lawyer, Professor, Loyola University New Orleans
Spencer Bailey — Writer, Editor, Journalist; Board Co-Chair, Noguchi Museum
Marlon Blackwell — Founding Principal, Marlon Blackwell Architects
Ángel Cabrera — President, Georgia Institute of Technology
Kristy Edmunds — Director, MASS MoCA
Rodney Ellis — Harris County Commissioner, Precinct One (Houston, TX)
Shirley Franklin — Former Mayor of Atlanta
Alex Grodd — Host, “The Disagreement” Podcast
Phil Harrison — Principal & CEO, Perkins&Will
Are Høidal — Prison Reform Activist, Senior Advisor, Norwegian Correctional Service
Julie Ju-Youn Kim — Chair, Georgia Tech School of Architecture
BJ Miller — Hospice and Palliative Medicine Physician; Co-Founder, Mettle Health
Susan Magsamen — Neuroaesthetics Expert and Executive Director of the Arts + Mind
Lab, Johns Hopkins University
Michael P. Murphy — Architect, Educator, and Writer; Founder, AMMA
Monica Obniski — Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, High Museum of Art
Brandan “BMIKE” Odums — Artist; Founder, StudioBE
Joshua Roman — Cellist and Composer
Samuel Stubblefield — Artist
Dan Tangherlini — Managing Director, Emerson Collective
Hank Willis Thomas — Artist
Gregory Thompson — Scholar, Writer, Artist, Chef, Creative Director
This event is made possible by the following sponsors: The Georgia Tech School of Architecture, Perkins&Will, The Eames Institute, TVS, Shaw Contract
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