The Urban Works Agency is a research lab at the California College of the Arts (CCA) that leverages architectural design to affect social justice, ecological vitality, and economic resilience. Its territories of investigation include housing affordability and collective living, climate risk, pop-up urbanism, and the politics of energy, water and resource management.

Neeraj Bhatia is a director of the Urban Works Agency and principal of THE OPEN WORKSHOP, a transcalar design-research office examining the negotiation between architecture, environment, and collectivity. Select distinctions include the Architectural League Young Architects Prize, Emerging Leaders Award from Design Intelligence, and the Canadian Prix de Rome. He is currently an Associate Professor at CCA and has previously taught at UC Berkeley, Cornell University, and Rice University.

Antje Steinmuller is a director of the Urban Works Agency, and founding partner at Ideal X Design, a design consultancy focused on the conditions and opportunities of public spaces in transition. She holds a professional degree in interior architecture from the Hochschule for Technik Stuttgart, a degree in architecture from the Technical University Berlin, and an M.Arch. from University of California Berkeley, where she was a John K. Branner Fellow and received the Henry Adams Medal and Certificate of Merit as well as the Howard Friedman Thesis Prize.