June 6, 2014
14:00-15:00: Transitional Territories Exhibition launch and walk through
15:00-19:00: Symposium
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft
Berlage Rooms
The Critical Environments Lecture Series explores the agency of design as a mode of investigation and reflexive transformation of the ever-changing interrelations between natural processes, societal practices, and (geo)political frameworks.
Through the framing of Critical Environments, this lecture series aims to emphasize both the urgency around critical environmental conditions due to the multicrises of climate change and social and ecological inequality, as well as the need for a critical approach to understanding and addressing them. The series brings together perspectives from urban and landscape theory, critical media, and design.
The series of events culminates in a one day, end of the year symposium on Critical Environments and the Transitional Territories Graduation Studio Exhibition. This event follows: a first event, Critical Environments / Critical Cartographies, which examined the role of representation and geovisualization; a second event, Critical Environments / More-than-human Environments, which shed light to the variegated techno-natural ecologies of urbanization and was combined with the launch of the 33rd volume of the Footprint journal, on Situating More-than-Human Ecologies of Extended Urbanization.
Speakers
Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture (ETSAM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. His work sits at the intersection of urban studies, critical theory, and social history, with a focus on how urbanization, design practices, and planning policies shape social change and community life. He is the author of Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) and editor of Neil Brenner: Critical Urban Theory and the Politics of Scale (Icaria, 2017). He has an extensive record of over fifty publications in edited books and journals such as Antipode, The Architectural Review, Society and Space, Social and Cultural Geography, and Planning Perspectives, among others.
Sébastien Marot, a philosopher by training, teaches environmental history at the École d’Architecture de la Ville et des Territoires de l’Université Paris-Est and at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. In 2019, he curated a large exhibition for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, “Taking the Country’s Side: Agriculture and Architecture” which has travelled in several other cities since. One of his main topic of interest is the hypothesis that a counter-exodus (i.e. an urban exodus)might be necessary if our societies are to seriously tackle the present environmental predicament.
Stephanie Sherman is a director, strategist, writer and producer working across design, technology, and urbanism. Her research focuses on the histories and futures of platform automation and the role of narrative devices in shaping intelligent infrastructures. She directs the MA Narrative Environments course at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London and serves as the Associate Director of Antikythera, a think tank focused on the philosophy of planetary computation based at the Berggruen Institute. She holds a BA in Literature from University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Philosophy from Duke, and a Phd in Design from the University of California. http://stephaniesherman.info
Ed Wall’s research explores practices of public space and processes of landscapes through concerns for spatial justice. He is Professor of Cities and Landscapes at the University of Greenwich and Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano. Ed completed a PhD in the Cities Programme of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ed wrote Contesting Public Spaces and edited ‘The Landscapists: Redefining Landscape Relations’, a special issue of Architectural Design. He also co-edited Landscape and Agency, Landscape Citizenships, and Unsettled Urban Space. His work has been supported by the Graham Foundation and Landscape Research Group.
Critical Environments Symposium
14:00-15:00: Transitional Territories Exhibition launch and walk through
15:00-16:45: Critical Environments Symposium | Session 1 | On Collective Futures and Infrastructures
15:00-15:15: Introduction to Critical Environments
15:15-15:45: Ed Wall (Greenwich)
15:45-16:00: Q&A
16:00-16:30: Stephanie Sherman (Central Saint Martins)
16:30-16:45: Q&A
16:45-17:00: Break
17:00-19:00: Critical Environments Symposium | Session 2 | On Commons and more-than-city Futures
17:00-17:30: Alvaro Sevilla Buitrago (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
17:30-17:45: Q&A
17:45-18:15: Sebastien Marot (Université Paris Est)
18:15-18:30: Q&A
18:30-19:00: Collective discussion on Critical Environments
This symposium is curated by Taneha Bacchin, Nikos Katsikis, and Víctor Muñoz Sanz.
