At this Taste of Iceland event, the team behind SOAK: Rituals of Collective Belonging, Iceland’s contribution to the 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale, brings the UNESCO-recognized Icelandic bathing culture into conversation with traditions from around the world and New York’s own culture of shared space.
Architect and curator Marcos Zotes from Basalt Architects, architect and author Christie Pearson, Kristín Eva Ólafsdóttir from Gagarín, and Miodrag Mitrašinović Professor at Parsons School of Design explore how water, architecture and ritual can create spaces for encounter, connection and belonging. Presentations and a panel discussion moderated by Andri Snær Magnason, writer and documentary film director.
Free and open to the public. Tickets required.
Kristín Eva Ólafsdóttir is a designer, partner, and CEO at Gagarin, with over 25 years of experience across Iceland and internationally. As managing director, she has led projects from early concept and strategy through design, production, and delivery, and has served as art director on major work. Her projects span collaborations with museums, public institutions, scientists, and brands, translating complex content into clear, engaging experiences.
Kristín holds a degree in Graphic Design from the Iceland University of the Arts and an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, where she focused on leadership and strategic transformation in creative organizations. She has served as a juror for numerous international design awards and was the first woman elected Chairman of FÍT, the Icelandic Graphic Design Association, founded in 1953.
Christie Pearson is an architect, artist, and urban designer whose work centers on water and public space. She is the author of The Architecture of Bathing: Body, Landscape, Art (MIT Press, 2020), which explores the public bath as a shared civic space across cultures, and a founding editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy. An adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, she works across research, writing, installations, and events, bringing a deep focus on aquatic and communal spaces to the conversation behind SOAK.
Miodrag Mitrašinović is a Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Parsons School of Design, The New School, and Director of its Master of Architecture program. His work explores multivalent relationships between design and the public realm particularly at its intersections with inclusive, participatory and community-led practices with the potential to create spaces for encounter, connection and belonging. He has written and edited numerous books on the public realm, including the "Public Space Reader" (Routledge, 2021) and "Architecture and The Public World" (Bloombsbury, 2024). In 2025, he produced a documentary film, "The Making of Corona Plaza" which documents the process of creating a public plaza in an immigrant neighborhood in Queens, New York.
Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer and documentary film director. He has written poetry, fiction, plays, nonfiction and science fiction. His book “On Time and Water” has been translated into more than 30 languages. Magnason has received international awards like the Philip K Dick Honorary Mention for “LoveStar,” the Prima Tiziano Terzani in Italy for “On Time and Water” and the Green Earth Book Award for his YA book, “The Casket of Time.” “The Story of the Blue Planet” has been translated into more than 40 languages and his play based on the story has been performed in 15 countries.
He is the co-director of three documentary films that have premiered in international festivals like IDFA, RIFF, CPH:DOX and HOTDOCS. He is the co-director, with Þorfinnur Guðnason, of the documentary film “Dreamland” (2009). His second documentary film, directed with Anni Ólafsdóttir, “The Hero’s Journey to the Third Pole,” internationally premiered at CPH:DOX in 2021. His third documentary premiered in 2021, also with Ólafsdóttir, “Apausalype” (Emergence Magazine).
