In the summer of 2020 the IAF delivered a free series of live, international online seminars and workshops designed to communicate a multi-scale perspective on architecture to a national and international audience of general public and practitioners.

Each week took a different spatial focus, moving from the private space of the HOME, into PUBLIC space and beyond into VIRTUAL space. The key area of concern in each case was how we navigate and utilise these spaces as we respond with creative urgency to the current global pandemic. The Summer School Seminars were recorded and are available to view below.

Week 1: HOME SPACE
Thursday 25 + Friday 26 June 2020
Lockdown, isolation and cocooning has meant that our domestic spaces have never been tested like this before. There are new demands on our homes as they must become even more flexible and multi-functional spaces. How can we adapt and re-invent the HOME environment during and in the aftermath of the current coronavirus pandemic?

GON ARCHITECTS (Madrid, Spain)
Gonzalo Pardo is an architect and associate professor at the Department of Architectural Projects, ETSAM, Madrid. He was deputy curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale, and since 2000 he has obtained 41 national and international awards for his work. His PhD thesis “Body and House: Towards the contemporary domestic space from the transformations of the kitchen and bathroom in the West” also obtained multiple awards. He is director of gon architects, a Madrid-based architecture and design studio. His interest is in the creative processes of architectural design and construction, as well as the role of mediation and communication of architecture as fundamental vehicles for transforming the world into a place more sustainable, worthy and free.

To lead the HOME SPACE workshop, Gonzalo will be joined by Carol Pierina Linares (Madrid, SPAIN + Caracas, VENEZUELA). Carol is an architect and guest professor at the MACA’s Global Project at ETSAM, Madrid. Her practice is evolving professionally in a transdisciplinary way between architecture, mediation, communication and research as a part of gon architects. She has collaborated on urban mediation projects for the Caracas City Hall and in collective work environments such as LAB.PRO.FAB by Arch. Alejandro Haiek in Caracas and in PKMN Architects (currently ENORME and EEEstudio) in Madrid. Since 2016 she has been living in Madrid, as a team member of projects including the ‘First Congress in Architectural Communication COCA’17’, the exhibition on international architecture collectives ‘CO. Exhibition’ at the Arquería de Nuevos Ministerios and the ‘xCoax 6th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X 2018’.

ELLEN ROWLEY (Dublin, IRELAND)
Ellen Rowley is an architectural and cultural historian based in the School of Architecture, APEP, UCD. She is a writer and teacher, currently curating Belfield 50, a celebration of UCD’s 1960s and 1970s campus. Ellen mostly writes about twentieth-century Irish architecture, as a type of social history. Her books include Housing, Architecture + the Edge Condition (2019) and More Than Concrete Blocks (edited, 2016 + 2019), as well as (as co-editor) Architecture 1600 – 2000, Art + Architecture of Ireland, Volume IV (2014). This history is pioneering and so, she admits, there are mistakes. In 2017, Ellen was awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, for services to Irish architecture.

Övül Ö. Durmusoglu (Berlin, GERMANY + Ankara, TURKEY) and Joanna Warsza (Berlin, GERMANY + Warsaw, POLAND + Stockholm, SWEDEN)
Övül Ö. Durmusoglu is an interdependent curator and writer, guest professor and program co-leader in the Graduate School, UdK Berlin and visiting professor in the HfBK Braunschweig. She acts between exhibition making and public programming, singular languages and collective energies, worldly immersions and political cosmologies. Övül was a curator at Steirischer Herbst; co-curated different sections of 10th, 13th and 14th Istanbul Biennials; and organised Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13). Originally from Ankara, she lives in Berlin.
Joanna Warsza is a Program Director of CuratorLab at Konstfack University of Arts in Stockholm, and an interdependent curator and editor interested in how art functions politically and socially outside the white cube. She was the Artistic Director of Public Art Munich 2018, curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the 55thVenice Biennale and associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale and edited several books. Originally from Warsaw, she lives in Berlin. In April 2020 Övül and Joanna initiated the exhibition “Die Balkone: Life, Art, Pandemic and Proximity” in windows and balconies of Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district where they both live. “Balconies serve as the public apertures of the private; the thresholds from which we can encounter the world during the confinement of the domestic. With zero budget, no opening, and no crowds, the project proposed an intimate stroll (within regulations) to search for signs of life, art, and points of kinship and connection.”

Week 2: PUBLIC SPACE
Thursday 2 + Friday 3 July 2020
Our relationship with public space has been transformed and is now being re-evaluated. How we design public space in the future will not be the same: how will villages, towns and cities worldwide endure new challenges, adapt and even improve in response to the current global pandemic? How can we re-configure public space, with lasting positive consequences for social and economic recovery?

STREET PLANS COLLABORATIVE (Miami, USA)
Tony Garcia is co-founder of Street Plans Collaborative and leads the firm’s Miami office. Tony is a co-author of the globally acclaimed series Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action, Long-Term Change, co-author of the Tactical Urbanism book, published by Island Press in March 2015, and together with Mike Lydon is the recipient of the 2017 Seaside Prize. He was awarded the 2018 CINTAS Foundation Fellowship for Architecture & Design and founded the Ludlam Trail project, which will result in the addition of over 50 acres of new park space in Miami-Dade County. Tony is a registered architect, a former part-time faculty member at the University of Miami School of Architecture, and most recently was a co-author of both the Bloomberg Asphalt Art Guide, a document that lays out how cities can use art to reclaim road space as public space, and NACTO’s Streets for Pandemic Response and Recovery. He is a graduate of New York University and the University of Miami School of Architecture and lives in Miami with his wife and two children. Tony will lead this week’s PUBLIC SPACE workshop.

RELATIONAL URBANISM LAB / LLABRESTABONY ARCHITECTS (London, UK)
Enriqueta Llabres-Valls is an architect and TEDx Fellow whose transdisciplinary work bridges across Landscape Architecture, Urban design, Ecology and Social Science. In 2009 she cofounded the London based experimental design practice Relational Urbanism Lab and recently cofounded with Aiman Tabony, LlabresTabony Architects. Among her awards and achievements are the First Prize for: the Arup Global Challenge (2012), Le Fanu Skate and Play Park in Dublin (2016), The Tiberia Masterplan (2017),  Singapore Urban Bridge from Innovate UK (2018) and Langyuan Cultural Station (2018). Enriqueta Llabres-Valls took over the Associative Urbanism program at The Berlage Institute between 2010-2013. Between 2010 and 2015 she taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Since 2012 she and Zack Fluker have been leading the Urban Design Research Cluster 18 known as “Fab&Media Urbanism” at The Bartlett, BPro. Her research and contribution to the fields of architecture and urban design has been published worldwide.

PROJECT FOR PUBLIC SPACES (New York, USA)
Alessandra Galletti is the Director of Design Practice at Project for Public Spaces. Her extensive international experience covers all aspects of the design process relating to landscape architecture, urban design and site planning projects. Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build strong communities. PPS is the central hub of the global place making movement. Founded in 1975, they have completed projects in more than 3,500 communities in over 50 countries and they are the premier centre for best practices, information and resources on place making.

Week 3: VIRTUAL SPACE
Thursday 9 + Friday 10 July 2020
Virtual space has taken on a huge significance during this global pandemic and it presents both a challenging and opportunistic space in which to design, teach, learn and communicate architecture. How can we successfully navigate and best utilise this space to collaborate across online platforms, employ virtual reality and curate architecture online, as we adapt to a new reality?

SPACE POPULAR (London, UK)
Space Popular is directed by Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, both graduates from the Architectural Association in London (2011). They founded the practice in Bangkok (2013) and have been based in London since 2016. Space Popular creates spaces, objects, and events in both physical and virtual space, concentrating on how the two realms will blend together in the near future. The studio has completed buildings, exhibitions, public artworks, furniture collections, and interiors across Asia and Europe, as well as virtual architecture in the Immersive Internet. Clients, collaborators, and commissioners include national institutions such as The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design –ArkDes, Stockholm, Sweden; Royal Institute of British Architects, London, UK; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; as well as independent galleries such as MAGAZIN, Vienna, Austria; and Sto Werkstatt, London, UK. Lesmes and Hellberg both have extensive academic experience having taught architectural design studio since 2011, first at INDA, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and since 2016 at the Architectural Association in London. They also lecture and teach workshops and seminars in universities across the world. Their current MArch design and research unit at the Architectural Association investigates visions for civic architecture in the virtual realm. Lara and Fredrik will lead this week’s VIRTUAL SPACE workshop.

BEATRICE GALILEE (New York, USA)
Beatrice Galilee is a curator, critic and cultural consultant specializing in the field of contemporary architecture and design. Beatrice is internationally recognised for her worldwide experience in curating, designing and conceiving original and dynamic city-wide biennales, museum exhibitions, installations, conferences, events and publications, bringing together the world’s most important institutions with cutting edge practitioners. Her research and writing has been published in journals, newspapers and magazines. She is the founder and executive director of The World Around, a New York-based conference and platform for cultural discourse whose critically acclaimed first event took place in January 2020. Between 2014-2019, Beatrice was the first curator of contemporary architecture and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where she organised exhibitions and installations on the Met Rooftop, and public programs of contemporary architecture, art, photography, film and design , launched the acclaimed public program for architecture, In Our Time: A Year of Architecture in a Day, as well as acquisitions and collections research. Beatrice was Chief Curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Close, Closer an exhibition that examined the plurality and diversity of contemporary architectural practice; co-curator of 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, Design is Design is Not Design; co-curator of 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, City Mobilization. She curated the 2019 Designs of the Year exhibition at London’s Design Museum, and the experimental performance design projects Hacked and Afrofuture at Milan Design Weeks 2011 and 2012. Between 2010-2012 she launched and co-directed The Gopher Hole, an experimental exhibition and project space in London. From 2006-2009 Beatrice was Architecture Editor for Icon Magazine, one of Europe’s leading publications in architecture and design. Beatrice’s writing has been published in a number of international magazines and books as well as daily newspapers, including e-Flux, Domus, Abitare, MARK, Tank, Pin-Up, Above, Building Design, Architectural Review, Architecture Today, RIBA Journal, Architect’s Journal, Art Review, DAMn, Frame, Wallpaper, Another Magazine, and the Serpentine Pavilion catalogue. She is working on her first book for Phaidon which will be published in 2021. As an expert in her field, Beatrice has been invited to sit on a number of major international juries and is a regular speaker at events, symposia and conferences on the topic of contemporary critical design and architecture. Beatrice is a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London, with a Masters in Architectural History from Bartlett UCL and a degree in Architecture from Bath University.

COMMUNITY DESIGN COLLABORATIVE (Philadelphia, USA)
Heidi Segall Levy is Director of Design Services at Community Design Collaborative, with a Covid-19 Response – Design A.I.D. (Design Assistance in Demand) team currently in operation and collaborating virtually. She is a registered architect with 30 years experience and is driven by a commitment to equitable design and development in the built environment. Her focus is on ensuring that all communities, especially those that are underserved, have access to high quality design and are integral to the design process. Since joining the Collaborative in 2001, she has created and managed all of their social impact design programs, including core design grants, technical assistance services, and proactive design initiatives, including Infill Philadelphia. Prior to the Collaborative, Heidi was a senior project architect with the Philadelphia offices of Kling and WRT, and an architectural designer with SOM’s Washington, DC office. She is an advisory board member of Philadelphia’s Citizens Planning Institute and Philadelphia Playful Learning Landscapes and serves as a mentor for AIA Philadelphia’s and Penn Design’s Women in Architecture programs, as well as JEVS Human Services’ 3 Cups of Coffee program. Heidi earned a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University and a BA in Psychology from Brandeis University.

Summer School was brought to you free of charge by the IAF as part of our online programme Project 20×20 – A Year Like No Other.