Amir Berenjian is a global thought leader in designing, creating, and implementing immersive technology tools at scale. As CEO of REM5 STUDIOS, he helps mission-driven organizations and brands utilize virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and spatial computing to inspire action. His team’s latest project, Apporter La Vie, places viewers on the frontlines of vaccine delivery in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Prior to founding REM5, Amir spent 12+ years in investment banking and corporate finance, focusing on mergers and acquisitions at BMO Capital Markets, Greene Holcomb Fisher, and Chartwell Capital Solutions.

Amir’s Lake Superior Design Retreat talk is titled “When the Frame Dissolves: The Post-Mobile Era of Design.” For the last few decades, we have lived much of our lives through tiny rectangles. Now the rectangle is dissolving. And spatial computing, like augmented reality and virtual reality, moves our digital lives into the physical world, layered onto the streets we walk or fully immersive in the rooms we inhabit.

This isn’t just a new gadget; it is a shift in human perception. When the medium becomes reality, the old rules collapse. We are no longer bound by physics or distance. We can now bridge space and time, bringing memories back to life and democratizing experiences once impossible. The question is: When the world becomes the interface, do we create more connections or more distractions?

As a founding partner of GGN, Jennifer Guthrie‘s design leadership merges a guiding, experiential vision with innovative and precise detailing. Her work ranges broadly to encompass urban districts of green streets and mixed-use housing, public squares, rooftop gardens, urban farms, and cultural institutions. She also oversees the management of GGN’s highly complex projects and is responsible for the financial arm of the practice. Jennifer’s clients have included the Smithsonian Institution, the Department of State, and several city governments and universities, including numerous projects at the University of Washington

Jennifer is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (Seattle). She is a former President of the Landscape Architectural Foundation Board, and she currently serves on the CEO Roundtable. GGN was the recipient of the 2017 ASLA National Landscape Architecture Firm Award, and Jennifer and her partners were the recipients of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture in 2011. Jennifer’s work has received numerous national and regional awards from ASLA, AIA, the Society for College and University Planning, and Tucker Design Awards. 

At the Lake Superior Design Retreat, Jennifer will share her story, creative process, and the influences that have shaped her work and the work of her practice. This talk explores the evolution of a design practice rooted in self-discipline and meticulous-ness toward one inspired by the notion of much-ness — a practice that ignites mental freedom, expansion, and creative complexity. Learning objectives include

• As professional practice trends toward faster, cheaper, and more automated outcomes, allow ideas to remain open longer. Create space for iteration, contradiction, and discovery within the design process.
• Craft, rigor, and precision are essential to design longevity. But when discipline becomes the goal rather than the starting point, it limits experimentation. Use mastery as permission to explore, speculate, and take calculated risks instead of repeating proven solutions.
• Surprise yourself. Embrace the idea that you don’t yet know what you don’t know. Test a new material, explore an unfamiliar spatial volume, build a model, or turn a drawing around and view it from a different angle.

Mary Jo Hoffman is an artist-photographer, renowned for her unique and personal engagement with the natural world around her, primarily in North America’s Great Lakes bioregion and the iconic scrubland of Mediterranean France. She is best known for her multi-year project “STILL,” where she created and posted one photo every day, on a white background, of a natural object found near her, whether leaves, flowers, seedpods, twigs, insects, or animals.

“STILL” images reflect Mary Jo’s profound admiration for nature’s subtle, seasonal expressions. Her photography encourages viewers to pause and contemplate one thing at a time, to be still, if only for a moment, in a world of distracted hurrying from one thing to another. The project is an endorsement of the power of dailiness, and an invitation to re-see the too-often overlooked “infraordinary,” that surrounds us–those sights, sounds, and subtle changes that we think of as common and familiar, but which can come alive with delightful possibility when paid attention to.

Mary Jo’s book STILL: The Art of Noticing features 275 of the most stunning photographs the author-artist has accumulated over thousands of consecutive days of daily shooting accompanied by perceptive, deeply felt, and often humorous essays illuminating the insights gained through this daily creative practice.

Mary-Jo lives in Shoreview, Minnesota, on Turtle Lake, with her husband, Steve, a food writer and author, and her aging and indulged puggle, Jack, with whom she takes walks as often as possible, in woods and fields, and along lakeside trails, on the hunt for that day’s STILL blog subject.

At the Lake Superior Design Retreat, Mary Jo will be talking about “STILL: The Art of Noticing.” Every single day for over a decade, Mary Jo Hoffman has made a photograph of found nature – no subject too small or too ordinary. For Hoffman, a former aeronautical engineer, this daily ritual cracked open profound revelations about the connectedness of all things, the importance of place, and her own life. This daily practice has culminated into the bestselling book Still: The Art of Noticing, already in its 5th printing. The book is a collection of 275 breathtaking photographs from Hoffman’s enormous archive, accompanied by perceptive, deeply felt, and oftentimes humorous essays illuminating the insights she’s gained from over twelve years of intimate daily noticing. Join Hoffman as she shares her artistic process, approach to noticing, and the concept of micro-seasons, inspired by a Japanese approach to seasons, which divides the year into 72 five-day bursts. 

Amy Noble Seitz forged a niche in the field of traveling exhibitions for the international museum and attractions industry. Before founding Exhibits Development Group + culturenut and a non-profit entity, she held various management positions in F100 to small businesses, including Champps Entertainment, Carlson Companies, Lintex Corporation, Northwest Airlines, AGORA, Steele Foundation and United Exhibits Group.

Amy has served on various boards in the arts and cultural space, an African-American humanitarian non-profit, developed projects with many embassies in Washington D.C and has filled up three passports cultivating cultural exchange over the past 20 years. Her projects have been on 6 continents and more than 30 countries and seen by millions of museum visitors.

She has developed and distributed numerous exhibitions which include Downton Abbey, Treasure of Napoleon, America the Beautiful, MythBusters: The Explosive Exhibition, Sherlock Holmes: The International Exhibition, Pompeii: The Immortal City, Beyond Rubik’s Cube and most recently, Princess Diana: Love Life Legacy.

Clients and collaborators include National Geographic, Guggenheim, National Gallery of Art, Discovery Channel, Biltmore Estate, ComicCon Museum and esteemed art, science, history, popular culture, archaeological and children museums, historic homes, and zoos. Her vast collaborations include Embassies in Washington D.C., and with major brands like Discovery Channel, Warner Brothers, National Archives, NBCU, PBS and include health-care leaders Mayo Clinic, Hennepin County Medical Center, Edinburgh’s Royal Surgeon’s Hall, University of Edinburgh and the University of Minnesota.

Co-author of the popular local field guide, Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest (Adventure Publications, 1st Ed. 2014, 2nd Edition 2020), Kathy Yerich has been hanging out with the Minnesota Mycological Society (MMS) and North American Mycological Association (NAMA) for almost 20 years. As a board member in both of those organizations, her mission is to make learning about mushrooms fun and accessible for everyone! Annual NAMA forays have brought her around the country in search of fungi. Like mushrooms, mushroom enthusiasts are an interesting bunch and nothing beats time in the woods!

Kathy’s Lake Superior Design Retreat talk is titled “Start Seeing Mushrooms!”

As the ground starts to warm up, the woods come to life. 

One of the most anticipated spring events in the Midwest is hunting for morels, an elusive but delicious mushroom. But morels aren’t the only fascinating mushroom you might find in Minnesota; as the seasons change, a multitude of fungal species appear. In fact, with more than 5,000 species of fungi found in our area alone, learning about them can be challenging, but so rewarding.

As people learn more about mushrooms, they start to notice them everywhere! The first and most common questions are often: “What is this?” and “Can I eat it?” This presentation is designed to help you truly SEE mushrooms, which is the first step in learning basic mushroom identification. But fungi are gaining status as more than just prized cuisine. They are emerging as noteworthy components for healing both our bodies and the environment. If you are at all “myco-curious” come and get a taste of all that mushrooms have to offer!