Welcome to the Future Architecture Rooms – an unconventional digital environment
How does it look when 27 leading European architecture institutions and organisations open their doors online?
Future Architecture Rooms is an unconventional digital environment, a collection of online spaces—rooms! Each of the member institutions of the Future Architecture platform – from famous museums to small galleries, an unorthodox publishing house or a provocative architectural biennial – use the rooms as stages for statements about their future work, as well as their reflections on this extraordinary contemporary context. You may open any door and find yourself in places of knowledge exchange, education, and adventure.
Born out of the lockdown
Future Architecture Rooms is a project that was born out of the lockdown, yet which opens its doors to worlds beyond the immediate crisis. Each room is hosted by one institution, one member of Future Architecture platform. 27 rooms behind 27 doors, producing a stunning diversity of materials, plots and ideas. Together they constitute – both visually and metaphorically – the architecture of the platform, making the most of its richness.
Enter the Rooms
Meet the artists, architects, curators, producers and creative directors behind these institutions. See them in their working habitats – studies, labs, salons, archives, exhibition halls or libraries. Learn about their teams, their working methods and their interests.
Visit their program all over Europe
Among the first opening the doors to their rooms are the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, Design Biotop, S AM Swiss Architecture Museum, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, DAI-SAI Association of Istrian Architects, Fundació Mies van der Rohe and Architektūros fondas! The rest will continue opening up in the following weeks. We are already looking forward to new rooms opening throughout September.
Future Architecture Rooms is a project by Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana.
Director: Matevž Čelik
Creators
Anastassia Smirnova (SVESMI), concept curator
Anna Kulachek, graphic designer
Maksim Karalevich, digital developer
Milan Dinevski, executive curator
With the participation of James Taylor-Foster (ArkDes) and Bika Rebek (Some Place).
Enter the Future Architecture Rooms >>
The University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture organizes a 2 day seminar and a website launch under the theme of “Architecture in Dialogue: 14th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Symposium
This event celebrates the six winning entries of the 14th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. This prestigious award program selects exemplary built work that combines social and ecological concerns with innovative and exemplary design. An award winner, a field reviewer, a member of the master jury, the editor of book Architecture in Dialogue, the Director of the award program and a steering committee member will be in conversation providing an insider’s perspective into this highly regarded award process. Each participant will share the lessons they learned from their part in the 14th award cycle and how this experience has helped shape their views on the future of design.
The UofT Daniels 14th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture website can be accessed through this link AKAA14
The past few weeks have seen Future Architecture members come up with solutions to upgrade the platform and adapt the programme to our current way of living and working.
Future Architecture Platform finds it of key importance to provide a vibrant and inviting space where a dialogue about architecture and society can take place. This is why they have been working hard on preparing online events for the summer and some live events for autumn, when, hopefully, we can be together again.
These ideas come together to form the upgraded version of the 2020 Future Architecture Programme, which includes numerous emerging architects and events held in European cities.
The current situation, which has profoundly shaken our world and deeply affected our lives, has stopped and changed the order of events as well as the FA member programme schedule.
With the real-life gatherings being limited, Future Architecture Platform has adapted the current programme to work in the digital space but looks forward to seeing you at the live events in autumn.
Until we meet again: Stay safe.
Upcoming
Future Architecture Rooms
#Online environment
Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) Curator Anastassia Smirnova (SVESMI)
15 Aug 2020
Future Architecture Rooms is a collection of online spaces—rooms!—each hosted by one institution, one member of the platform. A famous museum and a small gallery, an unorthodox publishing house and a provocative architectural biennial will use these Rooms as stages for their statements about future work, but also their takes on the current times and crisis. As if walking along a corridor, a visitor will be able to open any door and find themselves in places of knowledge exchange, education, and adventure. Please, enter…
Future Architecture Platform is delighted to announce a wide variety of events during the 2020 programme, made possible by the diligence and perseverance of Future Architecture members.
Building Narratives
#Research
Architektūros fondas‘ Vilnius, LT 17 Aug – 6 Sept
Architektūros fondas‘ programme Building Narratives is focusing on investigating the relationship between architecture and stories surrounding it. As a new narrative has the power to transform architecture on its own, it is extremely important to understand how different ways of talking about architecture can shape its future. >>
Ongoing
MAXXI Architecture Film Summer School
#Research #Lectures
MAXXI The National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, IT 1 – 30 Jun 2020
Architecture Film Summer School, promoted and organized by MAXXI in collaboration with the Copenhagen Architecture Festival, is an exciting contamination between languages and art forms which aims to develop new expressive tools and knowledge shared in the younger generation of architects and video artists. >>
The Open Bookshelf: Future Architecture Library #Publishing
Dpr-barcelona, Barcelona, ES
2020.
The whole Future Architecture Updated Programme 2020
Dezeen announces Virtual Design Festival, the world’s first online design festival, which will take place at www.virtualdesignfestival.com from Wednesday 15 April.
Virtual Design Festival is a platform that will bring the design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.
We will host a rolling programme of online talks, lectures, movies, product launches and more. It will complement and support fairs and festivals around the world that have had to be postponed or cancelled and it will provide a platform for design businesses, so they can in turn support their supply chains.
While we cannot pretend that these are normal times, we can at least explore alternative ways of sharing design, helping others, coming together as a global community and doing business.
Present your new work at the most significant architectural happenings and events that form the core of the 2020European Architecture Program.
Future Architecture is more than a competition. Future Architecture is changing the very foundations of architecture in Europe and beyond. Its goal is to explore boundaries. To break down walls. To build new systems. To form new coalitions. It is a platform that provides practitioners and conceptual thinkers with opportunities to speak up – and to be seen and heard.
Let the Future Architecture platform help you elevate and sharpen your practice. Start exchanging your ideas and projects with peers from all over the world as well as high-profile institutions – museums, galleries, publishing houses, biennials and festivals – to find avenues toward international recognition.
We are inviting multidisciplinary emerging professionals from all over the globe to apply with transformative projects related to our living environments. Send us your completed projects, your theoretical or conceptual propositions for spatial, social or cultural innovation, and join our discussion about the future of architecture.
We welcome projects that address:
uture Architecture’s board of members will invite selected applicants to present their projects at the Creative Exchange in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and to engage in possible activities within the European Architecture program. The platform will cover travel (from within the EU) and accommodation costs for selected participants.
Platform members will cover travel (from within the EU) and accommodation costs, and will provide an honorarium to the participants that they invite to contribute to their events.
All applications will be published on the website of the Future Architecture platform. The applications will be judged by the Future Architecture board of members, the Future Architecture alumni, and members of the public through online voting.
The call is open to emerging architects, landscape architects, urban planners, designers, engineers, artists, curators, people involved in architectural communication and anyone whose professional work is focused on the future of architecture and living environments. To be eligible as an emerging creative for the Future Architecture Platform, applicants must meet the following criteria:
The open call starts at 12.00 pm CET on 18 November 2019, and all entries must be received by 16.00 pm CET on 6 January 2020. Multiple entries are permitted as an individual or as a collective.
Go to FutureArchitecture for more info on applying for the call 2020
Ajmona Hoxha is an architect engaged with projects in urbanism and public space. Engaged since 2016 with 51N4E, a Brussel-based practice and the daughter company iRI based in Tirana, she acts as a project lead for a series of public space projects, among which the recently awarded as the ‘Best European Public Space’, as well as finalists of ‘Mies van der Rohe Award 2019’, central plaza of Skanderbeg Square. Over the years she has worked in a variety of contexts such as Tirana, Istanbul, Brussels, with a focus in projects with public character, reflecting her personal interest for cross- cultural environments. Prior to 51N4E, she was engaged in Atelier Albania, a research by design atelier, acting as a project coordinator for a series of international competitions in Albania, aiming the revitalization of public buildings among which ‘Reactivation of Heritage Cultural Quartet’, a revitalization project for public iconic abandoned buildings in Tirana. Her former teaching experience at Epoka University in Tirana, contributed to a thorough research on the Urban Ecology and its impact in Public Space, exemplified in the case study of the central plaza of Tirana.
About the lecture / September/30/2020 18:30 CET
Skenderbeg Square
Skanderbeg Square, an overview that scrutinizes through the ambitious transformation of the central plaza in Tirana, Albania, the economic center as well as a place of great symbolic value for the country. Originating as a result of the 1939 urban renewal plan under the occupation of Italy, turned into a parade ground during the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, and lately a busy traffic square in the 1990s, revitalization of Skanderbeg square redesigns also a long history, accompanied by controversial discussions.
Transforming the central square of a nation that was founded only in 1912 and that is now a developing, young democracy, the project compresses all the hopes and tensions that come with that transition. Although, the competition took place as early as 2007, the process underwent a series of ruptures and got finalized only a decade after. Designing such a public space, laden with history and aspirations, required the reframing of a new image that encapsulated the previous ones, and looking at the history and the heritage as a sequence of ideas and interventions; a palimpsest, a space that needs to transform in order to stay alive.
Skanderbeg Square combines together a new form – a pyramidal square that is surrounded by a green antechamber, a belt that allows for time to prepare before stepping in the vast open space. Aligned by a pantheon of prominent public buildings, it enhances that each one of them is equally present on the square, antagonizing a commercial realm, rather inviting the user to a civic space, a stage where citizens can become dominant. A common ground to stay and reflect, a stage where a multitude of actions can happen. The square is adorned with the green belt, an opportunity to create a climate within a climate, and invites users to become part of it via their own appropriation or by entering a ‘dialogue’ between premises sitting on the square and their ‘gardens’, which often become hosts to their functions.
Finalized in 2017, today Skanderbeg Square has turned into a public space of more than ten hectares exclusively for the pedestrian use, with a generous open esplanade of greenery in the heart of the capital city.
Benedetta Tagliabue studied architecture at the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) and currently acts as director of the international architecture firm Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, founded in 1994 in collaboration with Enric Miralles, based in Barcelona, Shanghai and Paris.
Among her most notable projects built are the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Diagonal Mar Park, the Santa Caterina market in Barcelona, Campus Universitario de Vigo, and the Spanish Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo which was awarded the prestigious RIBA International “Best International Building of 2011” award.
Current studio projects include the Business School of Fudan University in Shanghai, office towers in Xiamen and Taichung, public spaces of HafenCity in Hamburg Germany, the metro station Clichy-Montfermeil in Paris, France (1st prize in competition), the Naples Underground Central Station in Italy, among others.
Her studio works in the fields of architecture, design of public spaces, rehabilitation, interior and industrial design. Her poetic architecture, always attentive to its context, has won international awards in the fields of public space and design.
In the teaching field, she has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Columbia University and Barcelona ETSAB, lecturing regularly at architecture forums and universities, and is part of jurors around the world, e.g. the Princesa de Asturias awards and since 2014 she is part of the jury of the Pritzker Prize. In 2004 she received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland.
Her work received the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2005, the National Spanish Prize in 2006, the Catalan National prize in 2002, City of Barcelona prize in 2005 and 2009, FAD prizes in 2000, 2003 and 2007.
She received the 2013 RIBA Jencks Award, which is given annually to an individual or practice that has recently made a major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. And in May 2019, she received the Cross of Sant Jordi granted by the Generalitat of Catalonia for the excellence of her professional practice in the field of architecture worldwide.
She is also the director of the Enric Miralles Foundation, whose goal is to promote experimental architecture in the spirit of her late husband and partner Enric Miralles.
Miralles Tagliabue EMBT is an international acknowledged architecture studio founded in 1994 by the association of Enric Miralles (1955-2000) and Benedetta Tagliabue in Barcelona. Coincidently this partnership began just before the start of the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona’92, an apogee period of the city and its architecture.
During their cooperation, Enric and Benedetta started projects like the New Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, the Utrecht City Hall in Holland, the Headquarters of Gas Natural, the Market and neighbourhood of Santa Caterina, their own house in the old city in Barcelona and so on.
After the premature death of Enric Miralles in 2000, husband and partner of Benedetta, she continued leading their office, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT as a sole partner, finishing over ten uncompleted works of Enric and starting many new ones.
EMBT’s mature approach to architecture, interior design, facility planning includes experience with educational, commercial, industrial and residential buildings, restoration of buildings as well as special purpose landscape architecture.
The studio has experience in public spaces and buildings in both Europe and China working for State and Local Governments as well as Corporate and private clients.
Current studio projects include the Business School of Fudan University in Shanghai, office towers in Xiamen and Taichung, public spaces of HafenCity in Hamburg Germany, the metro station Clichy-Montfermeil in Paris, France (1st prize in competition) and the metro central station inNaples, Italy, among others.
Today EMBT has offices in Barcelona and Shanghai, and is operating all over the world with a number of new projects in Europe, China, Taiwan, etc. Continuously growing and developing, the working environment is multicultural and full of young aspiring architects working hand in hand with the project directors to produce new innovative ideas and designs.
Nonetheless the office has kept its fundamental core: an open approach, full of exploration and experiments together with a high level of conceptual thought.
As an acknowledgment of the work done over the years, EMBT has received the Catalan National prize in 2002, RIBA Stirling Prize in 2005, the National Spanish Prize in 2006, City of Barcelona prize in 2005 and 2009, FAD prizes in 2000, 2003 and 2007, and WAF prizes in 2010 and 2011.
Shpend Ahmeti was born on April 18, 1978, in Pristina. He graduated in master studies in Public Policies at Harvard University, USA, during the years 2002-2004, specializing in Economic and Political Development. He has completed university studies in Economics and Business Administration at the American University in Bulgaria, during the years 1996-2000, specializing in Applied Economics and Business Administration.
During the studies between the years 1999-2002, Mr. Ahmeti was senator and then the President of the Student Government at American University in Bulgaria, as well as leader of various communities (from more than ten countries) through the period of reforms at university. At the American Universities, involvement in the students’ government is the experience that combines knowledge, organization, confronting the protection of the rights and responsibility of faith from friends and colleagues.
Since 2005, Shpend is a lecturer of Public Policies and International Economic Policies at the American University in Kosovo (AUK). He is currently serving his second mandate as the Prishtina Mayor.
About the event / September/22/2020 18:30 CET
The Mayor will be joining a panel on the “Prishtina Public Archipelago” together with Donika Luzhnica, Eliza Hoxha, Arber Sadiki, Nol Binakaj and Bekim Ramku. The panel will be discussing the publicness issues in Prishtina, specifically the public “islands” that the KAF team selected for their study which is going to be presented at the Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition in 2021.
For his contributions to architecture as an art, Nader Tehrani is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ 2020 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize.
Nader Tehrani is the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York. He was previously a professor of architecture at MIT, where he served as the Head of the Department from 2010-2014. He is also Principal of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry.
Tehrani received a B.F.A. and a B.Arch from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and 1986 respectively. He continued his studies at the Architectural Association, where he attended the Post-Graduate program in History and Theory. Upon his return to the United States, Tehrani received the M.A.U.D from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1991.
Tehrani has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design, and the University of Toronto’s Department of Architecture where he served as the Frank O. Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design, Landscape and Design. He also recently served as the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome and the inaugural Paul Helmle Fellow at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Tehrani has lectured widely at institutions including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Harvard University, Princeton University and the Architectural Association. Tehrani has participated in many symposia including the Monterey Design Conference (2009), the Buell Center ‘Contemporary Architecture and its Consequences’ at Columbia University (2009), and the Graduate School of Design ‘Beyond the Harvard Box’ (2006). The works of Nader Tehrani have been widely exhibited at MOMA, LA MOCA and ICA Boston. His work is also part of the permanent collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture and the Nasher Sculpture Center.
His work has been published in a variety of journals internationally which reflect his research on materiality, fabrication and tectonics. Selected articles include: ‘Versioning: Connubial Reciprocities of Surface and Space’ published in Architectural Design (Sep, Oct 2002); ‘Aggregation’ and ‘Difficult Synthesis’, featured in Material Design: Informing Architecture by Materiality, by Thomas Schroepfer (2011); ‘A Disaggregated Manifesto’ published in The Plan (2016); and ‘The Tectonic Grain’, featured in Manifesto 21 (2017). Tehrani’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, LA MoCA, and is part of the permanent exhibit at the Nasher and the Canadian Center for Architecture.
Tehrani’s work has been recognized with notable awards, including eighteen Progressive Architecture Awards, four 2018 American Architecture Awards, four 2017 Chicago Athenaeum Awards, a 2019 AIA Cote Top Ten Award, a finalist for the 2017 Moriyama RAIC International Prize, and a nominee for the 2017 Marcus Prize for Architecture. Other honors include: a 2014 Holcim Foundation Sustainability Award, the 2012 Hobson Award, the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the 2007 United States Artists Award, USA Target Fellows AD award, the 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, and the 2002 Harleston Parker Award. Over the past seven years, NADAAA has consistently ranked as a top design firm in Architect Magazine’s Top 50 U.S. Firms List, ranking as First three of those years.
About the lecture / October/08/2020 19:30 CET
Probable Architecture of Improbable Reason
An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a founding part- ner of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.
A leading voice in the debate on new technologies’ impact on urban life and design, Carlo has co-authored over 500 publications, including “The City of Tomorrow” (Yale University Press, with Matthew Claudel), and holds several technical patents. His articles and interviews have appeared on international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Scientific American, BBC, Project Syndicate, Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore, Domus. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and MoMA in New York City.
Carlo has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames & Hudson’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future. Blueprint Magazine included him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’, Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ and Fast Company named him as one of the ’50 Most Influential Designers in America’. He was also featured in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. Three of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel and Scribit – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.
Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), program director at the Strelka Insti- tute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, and was named Inaugural Innovator in Residence by the Queensland Government. He was the curator of the Future Food District pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan and chief curator of the “Eyes of the City” section at the 2019 UABB Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Shenzhen. He is currently serving as co- chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
About the lecture / September/25/2020 19:30 CET
The Future of the Office
