Beatrice Leanza

Beatrice Leanza is a cultural strategist, museum director and critic with a background in Asian studies who was based in Beijing for 17 years, where she was the creative director of Beijing Design Week and co-founded The Global School, the first independent institute for interdisciplinary creative research established in China.

She has served as director of maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, and director of mudac – Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Her work has consistently engaged institutional agency with transformational experiments cantering a participatory, transdisciplinary approach. Her book The New Design Museum – Co-Creating the Present, Prototyping the Future (Park Books, 2025) explores institutional practices in design and architecture addressing 21-century challenges.

International projects include Across Chinese Cities, a research program presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale at three editions from 2014 to 2018 and The Um Slaim School – An Architecture of Connection, Saudi Arabia Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale whose public program engaged over 60 practitioners from the MENA region.