The IABR 2024: Nature of Hope is hosting an educational symposium to learn from novel and urgent approaches in the way architecture and affiliated spatial design practices are taught, learned and crucially, unlearned.
The ecological crises are changing the spatial and material realities within which design operates, demanding a reorienting of design’s priorities and a rethinking of the tools and methods we use to act in relation and response to these changes. After all, systemic change requires not only transformation of our systems of construction and the materials that we use, but also to our values and our frameworks for thinking and doing. What educational formats and practices acknowledge head on the systemic challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and widening social inequalities, and that equip us to envision collective futures otherwise?
In the context of the IABR 2024: Nature of Hope, the symposium Nature of Knowledge will learn from experimental and hopeful pedagogical projects that critically reappraise the knowledges and skills designers need to think with, make with and alliance with. Together we will celebrate some of the essential and inspiring pedagogical initiatives that seek transformative ways of spatially, materially and equitably shaping our living environments with respect and care for the Earth, its lands and its beings.
The symposium consists of an afternoon program and an evening program. Please note that tickets for both parts are sold below or via the public program.
Afternoon program Nature of Knowledge
1.30 - 2.00 p.m. Doors open / registration
2.00 - 2.15 p.m Welcome & Introduction by Saskia van Stein, director IABR
2.15 - 3.45 p.m Block 1 | Knowledge for a Post-Growth World
3.45 - 4.15 p.m. Break / Guided tour exhibition
4.30 - 6.00 p.m. Block 2 | Nature of Knowledge
Evening program Nature of Knowledge
7.00 - 7.30 p.m. Doors open / registration
7.30 - 9.00 p.m. Knowing and Doing: Practice in Transition
Videorecordings:
Part I: Videorecording
Part II: Videorecording
Part III: Videorecording
Program description
2.15 - 3.45 p.m. Block 1 | Knowledge for a Post-Growth World
The design and construction industries, premised on logics of production and material and social extraction, create an estimated third of the planet’s landfill material and at least 40% of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions. As ecological and social fabrics unravel, these logics no longer hold. Knowledge for a Post-Growth World will learn from academics and practitioners whose pedagogical work challenges our inherited notions of nature and our attitudes towards the environments in which we dwell, seeking alternative frameworks for thinking and doing that prioritise regenerative and equitable living practices on a finite planet.
Moderator: Véronique Patteeuw (lecturer at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et du Paysage Lille and academic editor of OASE)
Lectures by: Daniel Barber (Chair of Architecture History and Theory at TU Eindhoven), Katja Schechtner (Urban Scientist at OECD and MIT), Phoebe Lickwar, (Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin)
4.30 - 6.00 p.m. Block 2 | Nature of Knowledge
We build the worlds we draw and we draw the worlds we imagine. The enduring legacy of Western modernity is to discount certain forms of knowledge (such as situated, tacit and embodied knowledge) while privileging select others, drastically limiting our collective imaginations for the possible. The ongoing ecological and social crises might also be considered crises of the imagination. Nature of Knowledge will hear from architects and organisers who seek to radically and inclusively reorient and diversify how, where, from what, and from whom we learn to know and practice as researchers, designers and makers.
Moderator: Sergio M Figueiredo (Assistant Professor Architecture History and Theory, TU Eindhoven)
Lectures by: Lara Schrijver (University of Antwerp - professor in Architecture Theory), Sofie Pelsmakers (Tampere University - Professor of Architecture / Founder Arch4Change), Kasia Nawratek (Senior lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture)
7.30 - 9.00 p.m. Evening program | Knowing and Doing: Practice in Transition
Spatial design practice is fundamentally interdisciplinary and collaborative, operating in the ineffable space between the projective and the pragmatic. Research, critique, speculation and intervention are all in the remit of the designer; the built environment is at once the subject and object of both study and design action. Amid crises of knowledge and imagination, linking and alliancing practitioners and pedagoges operating across the breadth of this spectrum is paramount. Knowing and Doing: Practice in Transition will hear from academics and practitioners whose work cross-fertilises knowledges and processes across academia, professional practice, and land-based expertise.
Moderator: Janna Bystrykh (head of the Master’s Programme in Architecture, at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and co-curator IABR Nature of Hope)
Lectures by: Federico Savini (UvA Associate Professor in Environmental Planning, Institutions and Politics Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences), Tatjana Schneider (Head of the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and the City at the Technical University Braunschweig), Sascha Glasl (co-founder Space&Matter), Emma Diehl (landscape architect and architecture researcher)
Language: English
Tickets afternoon program: 7,50 euros (coffee, tea and entrance to the exhibition included)
Tickets evening program: 5 euros
