Stephen Burks Man Made

About Stephen Burks Man Made

Partners Malika Leiper and Stephen Burks have forged a unique path by embracing the challenge to advocate for hand production as a strategy for innovation.

Their holistic approach transcends the singular definitions of art, architecture, and design in favor of a hybrid synthesis of craft, community, and industry.

With solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Stephen Burks: Man Made (March 31 - June 26, 2011), the High Museum of Art, Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place (September 16, 2022 - March 5, 2023), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place (November 19. 2023 - April 16, 2024), they have distinguished themselves through socially engaged partnerships that contribute to a more inclusive and pluralistic vision of design.

Since 2024, their nomadic practice has taken them around the world as artists-in-residence in Senegal with the Albers Foundation, Montana with the Archie Bray Foundation, and Japan with Space Un Tokyo where they opened the transcultural exhibition Kuba Sugi (September 6 - October 26, 2025).

Most recently, as co-curators of the US Pavilion exhibition PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity (May 10 - November 23, 2025) at the 2025 Architecture Biennale in Venice, they presented their groundbreaking contribution Objects of Belonging.

In spring of 2026, Malika and Stephen were the inaugural speakers of the Homo Faber Conversations series hosted by the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain.

Stephen Burks

Stephen Burks is an acclaimed industrial designer, product development consultant, and educator whose innovative approach to design synthesizes craft, community, and industry. Independently and through association with various non-profits, he has collaborated with artisans and craftspeople in over twenty countries on six continents. His socially engaged practice seeks to broaden the limits of design consciousness by challenging who benefits from and participates in contemporary design.

Stephen and his studio, Stephen Burks Man Made, have been commissioned by many of the world’s leading design-driven brands to develop collections that engage hand production as a strategy for innovation to express a more pluralistic vision of design including BD Barcelona, Cappellini, Dedar, Dedon, MASS Design Group, Missoni, & Roche Bobois.

He has been visiting faculty and a strategic consultant to academic institutions around the globe and taught architecture and design at Berea College, Columbia University GSAPP, ECAL, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture & Design, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Stephen received a Bachelor of Science in Design from the Institute of Design (The New Bauhaus) at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, & Preservation. He is the only African-American to win the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Product Design and the only industrial designer to be awarded the prestigious Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Stephen Burks Man Made takes its name from the studio’s eponymous solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2011.

Malika Leiper

Malika Leiper is a multidisciplinary designer whose creative practice bridges art, architecture, and urbanism. Born and raised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Leiper’s upbringing during a period of post-conflict reconstruction and rapid urbanization deeply influenced her focus on cultural conservation and economic transformation through design.

As a young adult, she moved to New York to attend Columbia University, where she earned her BA in History and Creative Writing. Upon graduation, she began a five-year career in the culinary arts as a chef at the beloved West Village restaurant Buvette. Recognizing the socio-spatial dimension of the city through its restaurants led her to pursue a Master in Urban Planning degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2020, she joined renowned studio Stephen Burks Man Made as Cultural Director and later, partner.

Leiper has also contributed as an author to design publications like The Architects Newspaper, Disegno, and Domus writing on topics such as post-colonial modernism, the decolonization of museum practices, and how design can extend craft traditions into the future.