Charles Jencks was born in Baltimore in 1939 and studied under the modern architectural historians Siegfried Geidon and Reyner Banham at Harvard and the Architectural Association in London. Known for his books questioning modern architecture and defining successive movements, he now divides his time between lecturing, writing and garden-design products in the UK, Europe and USA. His own innovative work includes dramatic and award-winning landscaping project, landform, for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He is a trustee of the Maggie's Centres, the charity he co-founded with Maggie Keswick in 1995, which has quickly established itself as an important architectural patron, commissioning architects to design innovative recuperative centres for cancer care.

Karl Kropf is an urbanist engaged in both theoretical research and practice, focusing on the morphogenesis and dynamics of urban form. With a background in the sciences, history and design, he is head of spatial planning and research at Roger Evans Associates and a member of the Urban Morphology Research Group. He has worked for a number of firms, including Skidmore Owings and Merrill in San Francisco, and as a consultant in France and the UK.