Example Project 01 — Critical Encounters

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

Last Updated 2026

critical encounters

is a research-based architectural practice that investigates environmental infrastructure, climate, and governance through spatial inquiry.

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

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