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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

Selected Writing 
Tidal Clocks: On the Politics of Water and Infrastructure
Room One Thousand Issue 14: Intertidal
2026

Staging Encounters: Chronicles of Displacement
South Asian Urban Climates
2026

Out of Sight (w/ Nimet Anwar)
Pidgin 34
2026

Redrawing Constructed Landscapes
Silt Magazine Issue 02: Intertwined
2025

Spiraling Remnants
POOL Issue 09: Loop
2023
Selected Exhibitions
Stoop Ladder
Annual POOTS Exhibition 2025
CityGroup
NYC


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 2026 
Published in South Asian Urban Climates

Written by Mahwish Khalil

Staging Encounters is part of a larger research project around the Ravi River. This essay looks into the role of representation in curating and documenting ongoing cycles of displacement within an active floodplain. Edited by Aparna Parikh and Nida Rehman

[...]  It further explores how different mediums of representation are weaponized to extend capital driven development agendas at the expense of local communities. Leveraging existing tools of drawing and worldbuilding, it proposes an alternative imaginary of the river and its environs. 

See more:  https://www.southasianurbanclimates.com/index/staging-encounters-chronicles-of-displacement-at-the-rivers-edge
Top Critical Encounters. All rights reserved by author and collaborators. 2026.