Stephen Burks & Malika Leiper

Partners Malika Leiper and Stephen Burks of the interdisciplinary studio Stephen Burks Man Made have forged a unique approach to design at the intersection of craft, community, and industry. Their workshop-based practice, spanning objects, furniture, lighting, and exhibition design, embraces the challenge to advocate for hand production as a strategy for Innovation.

Dubbed “the globetrotters of design”, Leiper and Burks have traveled to over twenty countries across six continents to build strategic partnerships between artisans, non-profit organizations, and commercial brands, linking them within systems of interrelation that extend craft traditions into the future and contribute to a more inclusive and pluralistic vision of design.

Recently, they co-curated the US Pavilion exhibition PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, where they presented Objects of Belonging. Their contribution of furniture and objects, notably a collection of quilts co-created with the Gee’s Bend Quilters, emphasized creativity as a tool of resistance among underrepresented communities in the American South.

The exhibition Designing Dynamism co-curated and designed by Stephen Burks Man Made celebrates the raffia textile arts of the ancient Kuba Kingdom with historic artworks alongside the premiere of their craft-driven short film In Search of Kuba.