Justin Den Herder is a Professional Engineer with 16 years of project-based, collaborative experience and knowledge. He has actively contributed on nearly 500 projects since joining Silman in 2007. His professional experience ranges from concept design through construction administration on new construction, renovation, and historic preservation projects.

Justin is the former Editor in Chief of SEAoNY Cross Sections magazine and has been published in Modern Steel Construction and the book DIALOGUES – A Shelter for Architecture published by the GIANY. In 2015 he traveled to Nepal for one month to assess earthquake damaged structures. He is passionate about art—poetry in particular—and in creating engaging, sustainable, and equitable architecture.

As a principal at Silman, Justin leads the firm’s efforts on Design Innovation, combining traditional engineering fundamentals with current computationally based tools and workflows with the goal of improving the ability to collaborate.

Justin is the recipient of the Fitch Foundation’s 2023 Robert Silman Award for his proposal 2x which seeks to repurpose wood framing from single family residences slated for demolition and repurpose them in the design of new structures using inventory-driven design and robotic fabrication.

Justin's CV is available here. 

Leah Meisterlin is a cartographer and geospatial methodologist. Trained as an architect and urban planner, Leah’s work engages the relationship between mapping technologies, representation, and spatial justice, in cities and across regions.

Her articles and essays have appeared in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Planning Perspectives, the Avery Review, and ARPA Journal. Among others, her work has been shown in exhibition at the Oslo Architecture Triennial and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is also one of the co-PIs on the public spatial history projects Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas and Envisioning Seneca Village.

She has taught at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Barnard College, the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design, and New York University. She was an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and a Research Scientist at New York University's Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health.

Professionally, she has contributed to several experimental and exploratory practices in 21st-century urbanism. Among those, she cofounded Office: MG; served as Director of Research at Special Project Office; and cofounded PRE-Office, a design and research studio that investigated the organizational structures behind design processes in the wake of the US foreclosure crisis.

Today, Leah leads a geospatial consultancy and spatial research practice Meisterlin Projects. 

Leah's CV is available here. 

Born in Brazil, Carolina Filippini obtained her Ph.D. in Visual Arts from the University of Campinas, Brazil, and her master's from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the Department of the History of Art of the University of California, Riverside, and a Visiting Researcher at the Center of Research in Art and Heritage of the National University of San Martín in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her research focuses on Latin American Modern and Contemporary Art, Art and Authoritarianism across the Americas, Women Artists, and Feminist Theory.

Dr. Filippini’s publications include book chapters and peer-reviewed articles such as “Between Nymphs and Lullabies: Beatriz González's Productions and Strategies in Light of a Gender Perspective”, in: Natalia Gutiérrez and Pollyana Quintela (ed.), Beatriz González: the image in transit (São Paulo: Pinacoteca of São Paulo, 2025), “Cybèle’s Women: Representations of the feminine between the 1960s and today”, in: Ana Magalhães and Ariane Varela Braga (ed.), Cybèle Varela - Trajectories (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2023), and “Women, the domestic and the erotic in the Pop Art works of Teresa Burga and Teresinha Soares”, History Journal of the Federal University of Espirito Santo (2019). She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation, which analyzes the trajectories and critical reception of women artists from Brazil, Argentina, and Peru working with Pop Art and New Figuration in the 1960s and 1970s. She has a professional background in curatorial work, including positions at institutions such as Japan House São Paulo and La Maison Rouge Paris.