Information
Mahwish Khalil is the founder of Critical Encounters, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture. Her work focuses on environmental change, with particular attention on water systems and their representation. Through design, writing, film, and exhibition-making, she examines how site-specific transformations are negotiated through architecture, politics of development and cultural production. 

Her work has been exhibited at Venice Architecture Biennale (2025) and CityGroup (2025). Her writing has been published in Room One Thousand, South Asian Urban Climates, Silt Magazine, Urban Assemblage, and POOL. Her short films, Ravi: Tales from a River (2023) and In the Fold of Shadows (2025) have been screened internationally.

Khalil holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Architecture with Distinction from Beaconhouse National University.
       
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Projects
Cloud Gardens (Last Resorts Collaboration)
Palancia Valley, Spain
2026 - Ongoing

Anchor Points
Competition Proposal
2025

Collective Hotspots
Andalusia, Spain
2024 - Ongoing

Tracing Water
Pucon and Atacama Region, Chile
2023-2024

Kinara-e-Ravi 
Lahore, Pakistan 
2023 - Ongoing

Writing 
Tidal Clocks
Room One Thousand Issue 14: Intertidal
2026

Staging Encounters: Chronicles of Displacement
South Asian Urban Climates
Forthcoming. 2026

Redrawing Constructed Landscapes
Silt Magazine Issue 02: Intertwined
2025

Spiraling Remnants
POOL Issue 09: Loop
2023
Exhibitions
In the Folds of Shadows
19th International Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
Arsenale
Venice, Italy
Short Films
Ravi: Tales from a River (2024)
Screened at the Middle East Now Festival, Milan, Italy
Screened at the IIUSFF Film Festival, Dhaka, Bangladesh

In the Fold of Shadows (2025)
Screened at the 19th International Venice Architecture Biennale
Press
El Confidencial (2026)
Árboles inyectados con trufa

Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) (2026)
‘Last Resorts’, un caso de estudio facilitado por BC3, presentado en el Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Cornell AAP (2025)
Venice Biennale 

Archpaper (2025)
Venice Biennale 
All rights reserved by author and collaborators.Last Updated                                                            2026
critical encounters
is a research-based architectural practice that investigates environmental infrastructure, climate, and governance through spatial inquiry.
3 2025

Transcending regional borders and landscapes, unprecedented heat levels engulf city centres each year. In a time where locals are often warned to stay indoors and withdraw from public spaces in fear of heat exposure, this installation highlights distinct instances where local communities foster collective intelligence as forms of resistance.
19th International Venice Architecture Biennale

The short film traces how everyday urban infrastructures evolve into cultural artifacts at the intersections of climate and architecture within the context of southern Spain. Collective intelligence is unveiled through ways of collaboration between locals and the city as they reimagine their urban fabric.
Andalusia, Spain

In collaboration with Laura-India Garinois. With funding support from MIT Spain.

Short Film [2025]
09:43:00
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Directed By: Mahwish Khalil and Laura-India Garinois

Photographs: (3) Excerpt from Biennale Catalogue. 2025.
                            (3.1) Photograph by Saule Barley.  2025.
                            (3.2) Photograph by Saule Barley.  2025.
                            (3.3) Photograph by Saule Barley.  2025.

3.1
3.2
3.3
[...]  The shadows of ancient tree canopies are integrated and readapted into contemporary infrastructures of shade, while the movement of water is materialized into urban cooling mechanisms. From fabric canopies sheltering streets to prosthetic architectural adaptations such as fountains, awnings, window blinds, misting devices, and green trellises on façades, these initiatives define a spectrum of resourceful, transformations.

See more: https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2025/natural/fold-shadows-prosthetic-dialogues
2 2023 - Ongoing

In the lower riparian landscape of Punjab, Pakistan, various communities confront the challenges of living within an active floodplain of river Ravi as it flows alongside the city of Lahore. 
Research

These communities navigate the dissonances of the river’s edge—its Kinara, marked and molded by persistent colonial (mis)representations rooted in practices of erasure and division. 
Lahore, Pakistan

This research has been supported by the AKPIA Travel Grant 2023.
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Author: Mahwish Khalil


Photographs: (2)  Kinara-e-Ravi. Drawings by Author. 2024.
                            (2.1) Panorama. Alternative Imaginaries. 2025.
                            (2.2) Panorama. Alternative Imaginaries. 2025.
                            (2.3) Panorama. Alternative Imaginaries. 2025.
2.1
2.2
2.3
[...] 
Stepping away from historical depictions that have reduced the river to a mere resource for acquisition, this research engages with design and the oral tradition of storytelling, known as Qissa Khwani, to propose new modes of knowing, witnessing, and ultimately, cultivating alternative imaginaries for Ravi.  It stages newer encounters and engagements with the river and its communities by stitching together stories of numerous community members, the dwellers, the boatmen, and the civil defense divers, actively defying and transforming the seemingly static Kinara—their home—through cultural and economic production.
1 2023

Photography as a medium has a distinct perceptiveness of time and space, when applied to the concept of lifecycles of buildings it helps create a dialogue between the growth of the city and its still, yet spiraling remnants.
Published in POOL Issue 09. Loop

Conceptualizing this dilemma in Lahore, Pakistan through stagnant images the photographs construct a consciousness towards the illustrated city. This essay tells the story of two unending urban loops.
Lahore, Pakistan


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Author: Mahwish Khalil


Photographs: (1)  Photograph by Author. 2018.
                            (1.1) Photograph by Author. 2018.
                            (1.2) Photograph by Author. 2018.
1.1
1.2
[...] One embedded with the city’s fabric and the other emerging from a political battlefield of paused construction in the city. Analysing specific case studies of such buildings in the city of Lahore, the work begans to document collective imaginations around these relics.

See More: https://www.pool-la.com/shop/issue-no9-loop
Top Critical Encounters. All rights reserved by author and collaborators. 2026.