Wood, Benjamin: - Benjamin Wood is an American architect born on a farm in Georgia in the country's Deep South. He flew F-4 Phantom fighter jets for five years in Europe during the Cold War before earning a Master of Architecture degree at MIT, since when he has designed a myriad projects, both in the United States and China. These include the Xintiandi area of Shanghai, completed in 2003, which in the words of one critic "reinvented the urban entertainment venue" by preserving and re-imagining Shanghai's old houses and alleyways with a "radical quaintness" which changed the city and China beyond. Since then, he and his team have completed over 200 projects in China, and an estimated 450 million people visit a Ben Wood-designed venue every year. At the end of 2022, he received the prestigious Magnolia Award from the Shanghai City Government in recognition of his contributions to enhancing the city's vitality. He believes the future can be what we imagine it to be.