Sarah Ichioka

Founding Director, Desire Lines, Singapore

Sarah Ichioka is Founding Director of Desire Lines based in Singapore and was a member of the Holcim Foundation Awards 2023 jury for Asia Pacific.

Last updated: February 03, 2023 Singapore

Sarah Mineko Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator, and writer. She leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact initiatives and organizations. She is a proponent of regenerative design, biomimicry, and the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into urban planning.

Her latest book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency (Triarchy Press 2021) co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, proposes a bold set of regenerative design principles for addressing our compound environmental and social crises.

Holcim Awards 2023 - Jury for Asia Pacific

Sarah Ichioka is Founding Director of Desire Lines based in Singapore; and a member of the Holcim Awards 2023 jury for Asia Pacific.

Sarah Ichioka has been recognized as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, one of the Global Public Interest Design 100, a British Council / Clore Duffield Cultural Leadership International Fellow, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In previous roles she has explored the intersections of cities, society and ecology within leading international institutions of culture, policy and research, including as Director of The Architecture Foundation (United Kingdom) and Co-Director of the London Festival of Architecture (both 2008-14).

Her critical writing has been published by Triennale di Milano (Electa), La Biennale di Venezia, Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (Hatje Cantz), Serpentine Gallery (Koenig), the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (Actar), Barbican (Prestel), Mies van der Rohe Award (Actar), and the Urban Age (Phaidon). Her work has been featured in outlets including the Financial Times, Dezeen, CNN.com, Channel News Asia, Monocle, publicspace.org, Folha de S.Paulo, BBC London, Wallpaper and Bloomberg CityLab.

Sarah Ichioka holds degrees from Yale University and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

She has served as an adviser or judge for many diverse projects, including the XXII and XXIII editions of the Triennale di Milano, the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge, Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia, the European Prize for Urban Public Space, and the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.