The Frog joins forces with Art Center College of Design’s Media Design Practices and the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design to present the work of three designers: Merve Behir and Jason Hilgefort of Land+Civilization Compositions (L+CC). Their practice spans the globe, with nodes in Rotterdam, Istanbul, and Shenzhen. This pair of designers brings a shared interest in urbanism, research, and education to the conversation and all challenge the conventions of design culture and production.

Merve Bedir and Jason Hilgefort are partners at Land+Civilization Compositions (L+CC), a Rotterdam | Istanbul | Shenzhen based studio exploring issues at the ever expanding edge of urbanism and public realm, with a multidisciplinary approach that includes designing, curating, writing, filming and education. L+CC’s work has taken part in Venice Architecture Biennale (2012), Shenzhen Biennale (2015), Bucharest Art Biennale (2016), Istanbul Design Biennale (2016), and Oslo Triennale (2016).

Jason Hilgefort is an urbanist | architect who studied at the University of British Columbia and the University of Cincinnati. His work experience ranges from New York, Rotterdam, to Mumbai and includes working with Peter Calthorpe, Rahul Mehrotra, and Maxwan A+U. He lead Maxwan’s numerous competition victories in Helsinki, Basel, Kiev, Brussels, Ostrava, Hannover, and Lithuania before winning Europan 11 in Vienna. He subsequently founded Land+Civilization Compositions. Jason’s teaching experience includes Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

He was in the curatorial team of Shenzhen/Hong Kong Urbanism/Architecture Biennale and a co-director of its educational platform. Currently he is the Academic Director of FUTURE+ Aformal Academy for urbanism | landscape | public art in Shenzhen. He was a regular contributor to uncube magazine – for architecture and beyond.

Merve Bedir studied architecture at Middle East Technical University (2003), and is a PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology. Merve’s recent work focuses on urban conflicts, urban transformation, migration and (forced) displacement. She was a curator for the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2013); curator of Vocabulary of Hospitality (Studio X Istanbul, 2015), and uncommon river (One Architecture Week, 2015). She taught for Columbia University GSAPP, The Hague Art Academy, and Piet Zwart Institute.

Merve Bedir was the producer of Agoraphobia, a film on urban transformation in Turkey. Her work was supported by Prins Claus Foundation, European Cultural Foundation, and European Union.

She has published in Volume, MONU, Funambulist, Docomomo, Zivot, Quaderns among others and her first book, Vocabulary of Hospitality, will be published by Dpr Barcelona/GSAPP Books (2017). Merve facilitates/actively volunteers for Matbakh-Mutfak, a transnational women collective in Turkey.