Mokena Makeka is an award-winning architect and globally recognized expert in urban design and strategy. He is Special Advisor to the Vice President of Academic Affairs and the Director and Curator of The Benjamin Menschel Civic Projects Lab for 2024-2025.

As an award-winning architect and public culture curator, Makeka served on the National Arts and Culture Committee for the 2010 World Cup and is a founding member of the national Creative Industries Federation. In part through his leadership, the City of Cape Town won a bid for host city of World Design Capital in 2014; Makeka helped to curate numerous creative capital endeavors at the city scale, engaging communities, policy makers, and investors to support greater civic dialogue and expression. He also co-curated the South African Pavilion for COP 17 and served on the curatorial and scientific committee for the Union of International Architects 2014 over a four-year period, culminating in a first-ever global conference in Africa of over 5,000 architects, urban planners, and community activists, the largest and most comprehensive gathering of architects and ideas in the history of the Global South. 

His vision for South Africa’s first independent museum of design forged the pathway for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa to emerge, and he was the precinct architect and lead urban designer for the same development. He has served on and founded various art boards, is an Aspen Fellow, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow, and Young Global Leader (World Economic Forum).

His professional work has been shown in the following cities in various museums and exhibitions over the last 20 years: New York, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Beijing, Tianjing, Singapore, Toronto, London, Venice, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Goethe, Seoul, Chicago, Milan, Rome, Libreville, Antananarivo, Accra and Dakar.

He is a co-founder of Southern Africa’s first independent and accredited School of Architecture, and he has just completed his term as the national President of the Institute of Architects for South Africa. His expertise incudes climate change, architecture, urbanism and heritage, as well as institutional design, and indigeneity in design.

Makeka brings a transdisciplinary passion for the Civic Projects Lab to be a premier beacon for partnerships and impact-oriented research, for and beyond the physical borders of The Cooper Union and with a deep sense of duty to the four faculties of The Cooper Union. He seeks to bring his world to The Cooper Union and share The Cooper Union with the world. 

Prior to his role at Cooper, Makeka was a principal at Dalberg Advisors where he served as office director for Southern Africa. He is a board member of the Green Building Council of South Africa, a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design, and a member of the WCS Young Leaders in Urbanism (Singapore). In 2002, he founded the international, award-winning architectural and urban planning firm Makeka Design Lab/Works. He was selected as one of the Ordos 100 architects by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei.