Contact

General: conference@criticall.es
Scientific secretariat: sec@criticall.es
Administration: admin@criticall.es
Communication: press@criticall.es

The Critic|all Conference is a place and an event. A place because it is an academic meeting point for researchers, teachers and architects interested in architectural culture and criticism, and an event because the forum that takes place during those days generates a fruitful knowledge, where the intellectual and scientific impulse is higher than the sum of the valuable individual contributions.

Our aim is to set a preliminary platform to launch an item, to call a theme, to forge some early reflections which allow the settling and binding of the topics that organize the sessions of each edition of the conference.

Although its environment is linked to the activities of the Architectural Design Department of Madrid School of Architecture ETSAM-UPM, it has a clear international vocation. Therefore, since 2020 we started a new phase in which each edition is organized in collaboration with a partner university. The fifth edition of the conference will be co-organized with the Department of Architecture of TU Delft.

Call for papers
e(time)ologies

or the changing meaning of architectural words

The study of the origin and history of words has played a central role in the recurrent search for a deep, allegedly forgotten, meaning of architecture. The strikingly persistent and often problematic influence of Martin Heidegger’s Bauen Wohnen Denken proves the fascination of architects with the ancestral power of words. The same fascination explains the equally recurrent urge to explore new meanings and invent new terms in architecture, in order to alleviate the weight of old cultural prejudices and connotations. Hence, etymological lines extend in two opposite time directions: one pointing to roots and sources, the other to future visions and transformations. Architectural thought oscillates between the illusory stability of conventional, present meanings, the mystery of remote, often obscure, connotations, and the poetic, creative drive of language invention. Choosing between communication (order) and noise (entropy), the opposite terms used by Umberto Eco, becomes a typically architectural problem, one which relates both to words and forms, terms and materials.

The heavy architecture-is-a-language fever of the 1960s is long overcome. Robin Evans’ “all things with conceptual dimension are like language, as all grey things are like elephants” might suffice to prevent its return. However, the multiplication and transformation of architectural words has probably accelerated since then, pushed by the development of competitive research production. In fact, every research problem is, at its core, a problem of language, of word use and word definition. Research on the contemporary urban and architectural condition can be no exception.

Meaningful arguments about the changing meaning of architectural words need to address the role of language in the description of current matters and realities as well as its potential to unchain innovative perspectives and actions. New situations call for new terms as much as new terms provoke new situations. Today’s interface of architecture with other disciplines is exemplary in this sense. The growing need to establish meaningful communication between experts from different fields fosters both codification and distortion of language, the homologation of terms and its expansion through translation and borrowing. In the first case, the descriptive precision is favoured to produce an objective (codified) system, whereas misunderstandings, metaphors and inaccuracies can lead to the generation of new knowledge and actions in the second. Such complexities are especially evident in the terminology emerging from practice-based or design-based research. In fact, the translation between visual and verbal signs, which is at the core of architectural practice, tends to obscure the distinction between descriptions and actions.

While the transdisciplinary context might certainly lead to an intensified look, in the last decades architecture has engaged in a process of expansion and adjustment led, in part, by new combinations of old keywords (ecology, landscape, urbanism, infrastructure, logistics…). Beyond disciplinary discourses, contemporary debates addressing the social, ecological and political connotations of architecture are providing a new set of critical words. Adjectives (“post-anthropocentric”, “non-human”, “inclusive”, “transcultural”) names (“decolonization”, “decarbonization”) and phrases (“climate change”, “race and gender identity”…), have gained increasing visibility over the last two decades, both to inform and transform architecture’s critical thinking. The proliferation of prefixes in many of them (post-, de-, trans-), denotes the urge to build new words and concepts from existing materials, pushed by the speed of contemporary culture. The problem of meaning persistence and change, but also of the tacit positions inscribed in words, can be exemplified by the crucial differences between “post-colonization” and “decolonization”.

These and other terms are generated by a sequence of adjustments and oppositions, distortions and borrowings. The study of such processes, not in strict etymological terms but in a broader sense including the complex relations between words, practices, disciplines, is key to unveil the cultural and ideological positions behind current architectural debates. We propose to carry out this critique as a tool to explore today’s emerging terminologies, and the ones to come.

The 5th edition of Critic|all Conference welcomes contributions that critically address the uses and misuses, the creation and wearing, the transformation and timeliness of the words with which architecture is – or has been – described, historized or updated through time. We expect interpretive work that draws new relations between words, concepts, things and practices, not strict etymological studies.

The most basic structure should present the expression or word under scrutiny, explain the reasons that justify the choice, formulate new interpretations or perspectives stemming from it, support these with arguments in the main body and bring the paper to a conclusion.

Papers must be limited to 5000 words, written in English and preceded by a 300-word abstract. Peer reviewing will be carried out in two phases.

Abstract deadline: 16 January 2023
Full-paper deadline: 24 May 2023

Critic|all is an initiative lead by the Architectural Design Department of Madrid ETSAM–UPM. This two-days edition of the conference is organized in collaboration with the Department of Architecture & the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, and will be held in Delft on the 10–11 October 2023. This research event aims to bring together both young and established scholars from every discipline dealing with architectural thought, including approaches from history, historiography, theory or design.

All accepted contributions will be included in the digital proceedings of the conference, a publication with ISBN that will be available online. Previous editions have already been indexed in CPCI (WoS). Depending on the amount of works submitted, the Scientific Committee will carry out a selection of papers for presentation during the conference.

You can download the full Call for Papers here.
Guidelines for authors
To prepare your contribution, please download the abstract template here.

Once your abstract has been accepted, you can download the full paper guidelines+template here (no more than 5,000 words, excluding notes and bibliography) and follow these instructions:

1. Authors / Registration.

Each author can submit only one work but can be co-author of others.

To submit an abstract it is not necessary to be registered. If the abstract is accepted after the blind peer review, every author must register in order to send the full paper.

2. Drafting standards and format

Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, and must not contain illustrations, footnotes or block quotes

Only abstracts and full papers formatted on the model of the downloadable template will be considered.

3. Submission.

For the submission of the abstract, it is necessary to attach an independent file to an email sent to the Scientific Secretariat sec@criticall.es. It should be named as follows:

A_threewordsofthetitle_namesurname.doc

Only those emails received before 24:00h (local time GMT-3) January 16, 2023, will be considered.

For the submission of the full paper, it is necessary to attach an independent file to an email sent to the Scientific Secretariat sec@criticall.es. It should not exceed 2Mb and be named as follows:

B_threewordsofthetitle_namesurname.doc

Only those emails received before 24:00h (local time GMT-3) May 24, 2023, will be considered.

Any changes to the scheduled dates will be reported through the conference website.

4. Language.

Abstracts and full papers should be written in English.

5. Anonymity.

To ensure anonymity during the blind peer review process, any personal data will be removed by the organizers, and a code will be assigned to each submittal before sending the material to the reviewers.

6. Blind peer review.

After the reception of abstracts, and in light of the 2 reports by the reviewers, the Scientific Committee will invite authors to submit a full paper. This requires that at least one report is positive. Abstract acceptance and registration ensures the publication of the full paper in the digital proceedings. Depending on the quality of the full papers, the Scientific Committee will invite only some authors to present their work orally during the Conference.

7. Notification of acceptance

The acceptance or rejection of the abstracts will be communicated to the authors by email.
Schedule
January 16th, 2023 Deadline for abstracts
March 14th, 2023 Communication of abstract acceptance
May 24th, 2023 Deadline for full papers
May 24th, 2023 Deadline for early-bird registration
July 24th, 2023 Announcement of invitations for oral presentations
October 3rd, 2023 Deadline for standard registration
October 10th-11th, 2023 Celebration of the conference
Program
The detailed program of the Conference will be announced in early September 2023.

Adrian Forty, from UCL, is already confirmed as one of the key-note speakers.
Digital Proceedings
The proceedings of the conference will be issued in early September 2023 as a digital publication with ISBN that will be available online. Previous editions have already been indexed in CPCI (WoS).

In the meanwhile, you can visit the section critic|others to access previous editions.
Organization
Critic|all International Conference on Architectural Design and Criticism is organized by:

Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos DPA
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura ETSAM
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid UPM

In collaboration with:

Department of Architecture & the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology TU Delft

Director
Silvia Colmenares (ETSAM-UPM)

Organizing Team
Roberto Cavallo (TU Delft)
Silvia Colmenares (ETSAM-UPM)
Vanesa Grossman (TU Delft)
Sergio Martín Blas (ETSAM-UPM)
Guiomar Martín (ETSAM-UPM)
Nelson Mota (TU Delft)
Scientific Committee
Tom Avermaete

Tom Avermaete is Professor for the History and Theory of Urban Design at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research focuses on the architecture of the city and the changing roles, approaches and tools of architects and urban designers from a cross-cultural perspective. Recent book publications include Casablanca – Chandigarh (with Casciato, 2015), Shopping Towns Europe (with Gosseye, 2017), The New Urban Condition (with Medrano and Recaman, 2021) and Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History (with Gosseye, 2021).

Ignacio Borrego

Ignacio Borrego is Full Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin since 2016, after 14 years of docent activity at ETSAM (UPM). His doctoral thesis Informed Matter, obtained in 2015 the X Arquia Tesis First Prize. His research is mainly focused on the intersection between design and industrialized processes. He founded the architectural office dosmasuno arquitectos with Néstor Montenegro and Lina Toro in 2003 and Ignacio Borrego Arquitectos in 2014. He has received 37 national and international prizes in architectural competitions and architectural awards, such as COAM Prize, AIT Award or A+ Prize.

Marta Caldeira

Marta Caldeira is a PhD Architectural Historian and Senior Lecturer at Yale School of Architecture. Her research investigates transnational discourses of modern architecture and the city, with a particular focus on historical contexts of political transition. Her approach to the history of urban form explores the intersection of architecture and urbanism with politics and social economics in the areas of urban planning, housing, preservation, and urban pedagogy. Her writings on architecture and the city have appeared in several architectural journals as well as recent anthologies on modern and contemporary architecture.

Alejandro Campos

Alejandro Campos is a PhD Architect and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Department of Architecture, TU Delft. His research and teaching interests focus in postwar European architecture, particularly the work of Aldo van Eyck. His PhD thesis is an exploration of Van Eyck’s own house as a document to unpack the architect’s architectural thinking. He has recently published an annotated Spanish translation of The Child, the City, and the Artist (2021). He collaborates as a Research Associate at the Research Center for Material Culture (Netherlands) and as a Visiting Researcher at the Jaap Bakema Study Centre (Het Nieuwe Instituut). He has previously taught at Technical University Valencia, Aalto University and Universidad Finis Terrae.

Roberto Cavallo

Roberto Cavallo is an Architect, Associate Professor, Chair of the group Architectural Design Crossovers and Head of section Theory & Territories, at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft. He is currently a member of the departmental Research Steering Team and promoter of several PhD candidates. Council member of the EAAE (European Association of Architectural Education), he is founding member of the Architectural Research Network ARENA. He has extensive experience in workshops, symposia, conferences, exhibitions, keynote lectures and as a scientific committee member in international academic and professional events. Since 2013 he collaborates with the European Commission as a built environment advisor.

Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti

Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti is a Postdoctoral Fellow from São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP) and former Professor Collaborator III at FAUUSP within the Program of Attraction and Retention of Talents from USP. She authored the book Housing Shaped by Labour: The Architecture of Scarcity in Informal Settlements and has given talks at several universities in North America and Latin America, such as Harvard GSD, University of São Paulo and the University of Waterloo.

Pippo Ciorra

Pippo Ciorra is a PhD Architect, critic and Professor at SAAD (University of Camerino) and director of the PhD program ‘Villard d’Honnecourt’ at IUAV. Visiting professor at Ohio State and other universities of North America. Author of books and essays, he was part of the curatorial team for the 1991 Architecture Venice Biennale and juror for the 2016 edition. He has curated exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Since 2009, he is Senior Curator of MAXXI Architettura in Rome and co-director of Premio Italiano d’Architettura. His main research fields are late XX century Italian architecture, museums and exhibitions, urban and architectural theory and its social and political implications.

Silvia Colmenares

Silvia Colmenares is a PhD Architect and Associate Professor of the Architectural Design Department at the ETSAM (UPM), where she currently serves as Sub-Head for Research and Publishing as well as a member of the Academic Commission of the PhD Program. She is a member of the ARKRIT Research Group, devoted to architectural criticism, having contributed to research projects on collective dwelling and public space. She has been responsible for the four previous editions of Critic|all International Conference and editor of its associated publications. Her academic research focuses on a critical re-reading of the terms with which modern architecture has been commonly described, in the light of the concepts of functional indifference and formal neutrality.

Giovanni Corbellini

Giovanni Corbellini is an Architect, critic of contemporary architecture and Full Professor of Architectural Design at the Politecnico of Turin. He has also taught in Venice, Ferrara, Milan and Trieste. His latest books in English are: Sayable space: Narrative Practices in Architecture (LetteraVentidue, 2021), Ex libris: 16 Keywords of Contemporary Architecture (LetteraVentidue, 2019), Telling Spaces (LetteraVentidue, 2018), Dr. Corbellini’s Pills (LetteraVentidue, 2016), Recycled Theory: Dizionario illustrato/Illustrated Dictionary (edited with Sara Marini, Quodlibet, 2016), Bioreboot. The architecture of R&Sie(n) (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009).

Íñigo Cornago Bonal

Íñigo Cornago Bonal is an Architect, Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, London, and PhD Candidate at TU Delft in the ’Architecture and Democracy’ program, a collaboration with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, at Het Nieuwe Instituut. He has practiced independently and collaboratively across art, architecture, and urbanism. His research focuses on the socio-political dimension of architecture and the agency of inhabitants, especially in housing. His latest publications include the Ahmedabad Cross Section (CEPT University Press, 2020), and the chapter “Open Building and User Agency” included in Housing and the city (Routledge, 2022).

Milena Farina

Milena Farina is a PhD Architect and Assistant Professor of Architectural and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture of Roma Tre University. She has also been a visiting researcher and visiting professor at TU Delft and ETSAM-UPM. Her research work mainly focuses on housing space in the modern and contemporary city. Since 2005 she has been collaborating with the academic journal Il giornale dell’architettura. In 2008, she founded with Mariella Annese ‘Factory Architettura’ (www.factoryarchitettura.it) where she carries out her design activity with a particular attention to public space and urban regeneration.

Françoise Fromonot

Françoise Fromonot is an Architect and critic, Professor at the ENSA Paris-Belleville and Visiting Professor at Rice School of Architecture Paris. A former contributing editor to l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, then joint editor of le visiteur, she was in 2008 a founding member of the independent journal criticat (www.criticat.fr). She is the author of numerous articles, essays and books, which include Glenn Murcutt (1995/2003), Jørn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House (1998), a critical account in two volumes of the latest renovation of central Paris, La Campagne des Halles and La Comédie des Halles (2005/19), and Michel Desvigne Paysagiste-Transforming Landscapes (2020).

Maite García Sanchis

Maite García Sanchis is an Architect, curator and member of the editorial staff of Lotus international. She obtained a Master’s degree in Advanced Architectural Design at the ETSAM and a PhD in Architecture at the IUAV of Venice with the thesis Domesticity vs. Typology, Lessons from Postwar Domestic Imagery. She collaborates in teaching at the Politecnico di Milano and carries out her professional activity in Milan. She has research experience in the fields of housing and design and has edited publications, organized and participated in seminars, and curated architecture exhibitions focused on design, housing and the transformation processes of the contemporary city.

Bruno Gil

Bruno Gil is guest Assistant Professor in Architectural Design, Theory and History at the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra (UC). Currently, he is subdirector of the College of Arts (UC), and co-principal investigator of the research project ‘(EU)ROPA’, at the Centre for Social Studies. In 2017, he concluded his doctoral thesis Architectural Research Cultures: Lines of thought within research centres, 1945-1974, awarded with the Nuno Teotónio Pereira prize. His research has been presented in international conferences and publications, including Footprint:, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Writingplace Journal, Docomomo Journal and Joelho: Journal of Architectural Culture.

Janina Gosseye

Janina Gosseye is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (TU-Delft). Her research is situated at the nexus of architectural and urban history, and social and political history. Janina’s most recent books include Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History (2021, with Tom Avermaete), Activism at Home: Architects Dwelling Between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance (2021, with Isabelle Doucet) and Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research (2019, with Naomi Stead and Deborah van der Plaat).

Vanessa Grossman

Vanessa Grossman is a PhD Architect and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft. Her work as architectural historian and curator focuses on architecture’s intersections with ideology, housing and governance, with a special focus on global practices in Cold War era Europe and Latin America. Her forthcoming book with Yale University Press, entitled A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France, examines how the French Communist Party became the patron of designs, discourses, and organizational efforts of a circle of modern architects, which found their most fertile terrain in France’s banlieues. Grossman is co-curator of the forthcoming exhibition Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha, A Retrospective at Casa da Arquitectura in Portugal.

Christoph Heinemann

Christoph Heinemann is an Architect and co-founder of ifau (Institute for applied Urbanism) together with Susanne Heiß and Christoph Schmidt. From 2001-2009 he taught Urban Design as Assistant Professor at the Brandenburg University of Technology, Department Urban Design. From 2017-2022 he was Professor for Architecture and City (A+ Stadt) at HafenCity University Hamburg. With ifau architects he has realized numerous projects for arts institutions as Palais Thinnfeld in Graz, The Showroom in London, Artists Space and the Goethe Institut – Wyoming Building in New York. He is especially interested in process-oriented strategies and participative design methods.

Hélène Jannière

Hélène Jannière is an Architect with a PhD in Art History, specialist in history of architectural criticism. Among her main publications on this topic: Critique et architecture: un état des lieux contemporain (2019); in 2009, with Kenneth Frampton, the special issue of Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale et urbaine (“La critique en temps et lieux”). After several publications on architecture journals, her current research focuses on architectural and urban criticism in the 1950s-1980s. With Paolo Scrivano, she co-edited a special number of C “Architectural Criticism and Public Debate” and an issue of Histories of Postwar Architecture: “Committed, Politicized, or Operative: Figures of Engagement in Criticism from 1945 to Today”.

Sharif S. Kahatt

Sharif S. Kahatt is Professor at the Department of Architecture at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), where he teaches studio and courses. Founding partner of K+M ARQUITECTURA Y URBANISMO in Lima, he develops urban and architectural projects in Lima and other cities of Peru. He has taught, lectured, and published articles in Peru, Mexico, Spain, England, and USA. He is the director of Revista A-Arquitectura PUCP Journal and has recently received the X BIAU Book Award in Sao Paulo and the Bruno Zevi Prize in Rome for his research and publications and has been appointed Curator of the Peruvian Pavilion at the 14th Venice Biennale (2014).

Paula Lacomba

Paula Lacomba is a PhD Architect and currently a Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellow (Spanish Ministry of Universities, funded by the European Union) at the Department of Architecture, TU Delft and ETSAM (2022-24). She specializes in school architecture and the Welfare States. After a study of how the British postwar school designs were tackled, her current research aims to unravel how the Dutch school designs can be (re)interpreted. She was a visiting researcher at Cambridge University (2018) and an Affiliate Academic at The Bartlett School of Architecture (2019) and is a Visiting Researcher at the Jaap Bakema Study Centre (Het Nieuwe Instituut).

Sara Marini

Sara Marini is a PhD Architect and Full Professor of Architectural and Urban Design at the Università IUAV di Venezia. Since 2019, she is the editor of Vesper. Rivista di architettura, arti e teoria | Journal of Architecture, Arts & Theory, DCP, IUAV, published by Quodlibet. Since 2020 she is scientific responsible for the IUAV Research unit for the national research project Prin ‘SYLVA – Rethink the Sylvan: Towards a New Alliance between Biology and Artificiality, Nature and Society, Wilderness and Humanity’. In 2018 the ‘Casa nera’, design and built project by Sara Marini and Alberto Bertagna, was exhibited at Archipelago Italy, Italian Pavilion, 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Sergio Martín Blas

Sergio Martín Blas is a PhD Architect and Associate Professor of the Architectural Design Department at the ETSAM (UPM). He is the Academic Secretary of the Advanced Architectural Design PhD Program at UPM and member of the NuTAC research group, where he has served as Principal Investigator and member of several national and international projects. His research focuses on the relations between collective housing design and urban transformations, with a special attention to social housing. He has curated several exhibitions and is currently leading the Ibero-American Network on Sustainable Social Housing (REDIVISS). Visiting researcher, invited lecturer and critic at TU Delft, TU Berlin, Cooper Union in New York, UNR Rosario, La Sapienza Rome and KTH Stockholm. His research works have been published in international journals like Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica, DASH or Lotus International.

Guiomar Martín Domínguez

Guiomar Martín Domínguez is PhD Assistant Professor of History of Architecture and Urban Planning in the Composition Department of ETSAM (UPM), and member of the NuTAC research group. PhD Architect from IUAV and UPM, she also holds a MA degree in Architectural History from the Bartlett School. She has been visiting researcher at TU Delft and ENSA Belleville, Adjunct Professor at URJC and guest lecturer at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and EAT (UCLM) among other universities. Her research work combines theory and history –mainly focused on processes of form generation in postwar architecture– with the study of social housing from a contemporary perspective, being a founding member of the Ibero-American Network on Sustainable Social Housing (REDIVISS).

Lucía Martín López

Lucía Martín López is a PhD Architect and Research Professor at the School of Architecture, Art, and Design of Tecnologico de Monterrey. She is a Level1 Researcher of the National System of Researchers of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) of Mexico. She was Coordinator of the Architecture Research Center of Anahuac Mexico University (2017-2018). She is currently a member of the research group on Sustainable Territorial Development at Tecnologico de Monterrey and investigates housing in Latin America and Europe, which has led her to obtain the Research Articles Award at the Spanish Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2016-2017.

Laura Martínez de Guereñu

Laura Martínez de Guereñu is Associate Professor of Architectural History and Theory at IE University and a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Architekturmuseum der TUM. She is the inaugural recipient of the Lilly Reich Grant for Equality in Architecture (Fundació Mies van der Rohe, 2018) and author of the art intervention Re-enactment: Lilly Reich’s Work Occupies the Barcelona Pavilion (2020). She has published extensively on histories of modernism and silenced and superimposed authorship. Her more recent effort to expand the notion of design signature is the guest edited journal issue “Who Designs Architecture?” (RA. Revista de Arquitectura, vol. 23, 2021).

Elena Martínez-Millana

Elena Martínez-Millana is a PhD Architect and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Margarita Salas, Ministry of Universities, Government of Spain) at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), funded by the Next Generation EU programme (2022-24). Elena is Visiting Scholar at the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI), in Rotterdam. She is a member of the research groups Architecture Culture and Modernity (TU Delft) and Vivienda Colectiva (UPM). The results of her research have been disseminated in several international conferences and academic journals. She has also been involved in Architectural Design teaching activities.

Leandro Medrano

Leandro Medrano is a PhD Architect and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Sao Paulo. He is the coordinator of the research group Critical Thinking and Contemporary City (PC3), member of the Council of USP’s Science Museum and Editor-in-Chief of the Revista da Pós of FAUUSP. He coordinates the research project ‘Architecture and Urbanism’, addressing social space in the 21st century: segregation strategies and appropriation tactics (FAPESP). Theory of architecture and urbanism, comparative urban studies, urban space, collective housing and social housing are some of the fields involved in his recent research. He is the author of the books: Vilanova Artigas: Habitação e Cidade na Modernização Brasileira and As Virtualidades do Morar: Artigas e a Metrópole.

Jorge Mejía Hernández

Jorge Mejía Hernández is a PhD Architect and currently teaches at TU Delft with the Chair of Methods of Analysis and Imagination. He is a member of the Delft/Rotterdam-based research group Architecture Culture and Modernity, where he supervises PhD candidates from the program Architecture and Democracy. He has worked as an architect for the Colombian National Natural Park service, and designed and built for the Colombian Welfare Institute and Bogotá’s Departments of Education and Security. Currently he is the science communications manager for the EU-funded COST action Writing Urban Places: New Narratives of the European City.

Nieves Mestre

Nieves Mestre is a PhD Architect and Associate Professor at the UPM School of Architecture. She has lectured at diverse institutions such as Syracuse University, London Architectural Association, IUA Venice, Nottingham University, Sapienza Universitá di Roma, TU Munich or Budapest University of Technology. She combines teaching and research with her own architectural practice based in COMBOLAB, whose work has been awarded in Europan 8, nominated at the EU Mies Award (2011) and recently selected for both the EMUASA headquarters in Murcia (2022) and for a Social Housing building in San Sebastian (2021).

Nelson Mota

Nelson Mota is Associate Professor of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. He earned his doctoral degree from TU Delft in 2014 with the dissertation An Archaeology of the Ordinary: Rethinking the Architecture of Dwelling from CIAM to Siza. Nelson is author of the book A Arquitectura do Quotidiano (The Architecture of the Everyday, edarq, 2010), and co-editor of Global Housing: Dwelling in Addis Ababa (JapSam Books, 2020). He is also co-editor of several journal issues (Footprint 17, 2015; Joelho 8, 2017; and Footprint 24, 2019). At the TU Delft, Nelson is the coordinator of the Global Housing research group and educational program. He is managing editor and member of the editorial board of the academic journal Footprint and DASH- Delft Architectural Studies on Housing.

Virginie Picon-Lefebvre

Virginie Picon-Lefebvre is an Architect and Urbanplanner, PhD in History and Professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Belleville. She has also taught at the Ecole d’architecture de Versailles, Harvard University, Ecole des Ponts and the Ecole d’architecture Paris-Malaquais. Her career combines research, teaching and practice. She has published Paris-ville moderne (2003), Climats (2012), on the issues of sustainable development and climate change and La Fabrique du Bonheur (2019) , which deals with the architecture of tourism and leisure. With Pierre Chabard, she has edited a historical dictionary and an atlas of La Défense in 2014.

Eduardo Prieto

Eduardo Prieto is Associate Professor in Theory and History of Architecture at the ETSAM-UPM. He was also a visiting scholar at Harvard GSD among other important schools. His research career is devoted to the intersection of architecture and environment, a subject still insufficiently explored. He has recently published Historia medioambiental de la arquitectura (Environmental History of Architecture), which is the first comprehensive history of the discipline from the environmental point of view. As architecture critic, he has been leading editor of the magazine Arquitectura Viva since 2011, and currently is the architecture critic of El Mundo-‘La lectura’ and of Revista de Libros.

Fernando Quesada

Fernando Quesada is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Alcalá de Henares. He has also been part of the research-creation group ARTEA since its inception. His research work focuses on two major fields: the theory and history of modern and contemporary architecture, and its relationship with the performing arts. The main topics in this critical framework are the body, biopolitics, spatiality and social theatricality. His most recent publications notably include Tecnopastoralismo. Ensayos y proyectos en torno a la Arcadia tecnificada (Ediciones Asimétricas, 2020) and Mobile Theater. Architectural Counterculture on Stage (Actar Publishers, 2021).

Armando Rabaça

Armando Rabaça is an integrated researcher at CEIS20 (Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies) and teaches Design Studio and Architectural Theory at the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra. He has authored the book Entre o Espaço e a Paisagem (Edarq, 2011) and has contributed to a number of architectural periodicals and books. He has edited the book Le Corbusier, History and Tradition (University of Coimbra Press, 2017) and is editor-in-chief at Edarq (The Department of Architecture Press) since 2019, where he also edits Joelho, Journal of Architectural Culture. His main research interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century architectural theory and urban design.

Jane Rendell

Jane Rendell is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Introducing concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through her authored books: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002). Her co-edited collections include Reactivating the Social Condenser (2017), Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City (2001), Intersections (2000), Gender, Space, Architecture (1999), Strangely Familiar (1995). From 2015-22 she led Bartlett’s Ethics Commission, (with Dr. David Roberts), and ‘The Ethics of Research Practice’, KNOW (Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality) (with Dr. Yael Padan).

Luiz Recamán

Luiz Recaman is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP). He obtained his Master and PHD degrees in Aesthetics at the School of Philosophy and Human Sciences of USP. His main work addresses the critique of architecture and aesthetics, and modern Brazilian and contemporary architecture. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Revista ARA FAUUSP and coordinator of the research group Critical Thinking and Contemporary City (PC3). He is co-author of Brazil’s Modern Architecture (Phaidon, 2004), Vilanova Artigas—Habitação e Cidade na Modernização Brasileira (Editora da Unicamp, 2014), and The New Urban Condition: Criticism and Theory from Architecture and Urbanism (Ed. Routledge, 2021).

Luis Rojo

Luis Rojo is a PhD Architect and Associate Professor of the Architectural Design Department at the ETSAM (UPM). He has been Visiting Professor at the Harvard School of Design, the B&S School of Architecture at the City College of New York, the China Academy or Art, Hangzou, and Visiting Professor of History and Theory at the School of Architecture of the University of Navarra. He was co-editor of the journal CIRCO COOP since 1992. Together with Begoña Fernandez-Shaw founded Rojo/Fernández-Shaw architects, an architecture office based in Madrid. Their work has obtained several COAM Prizes, and has been selected for the Spanish Architecture Bienal, the Biennale di Venezia and the FAD prize.

Marcos L. Rosa

Marcos L. Rosa is an Architect and Urban Planner, Doctor in Regional Planning and Urban Design (Technical University of Munich) and Postdoctoral Fellow at University of São Paulo. His investigation inquires agency and the coproduction of space to nourish an analysis of infrastructural space and collective housing, with focus in Brazilian cities. His books include Microplanning: Urban Creative Practices (2011), Handmade Urbanism (2013) and Codesigning the City (2017). He was the curator of the 11th São Paulo Architecture Biennial (2017-2018).

Rosana Rubio Hernández

Rosana Rubio Hernández, is a PhD Architect and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Tampere University, School of Architecture. She also obtained a MSc in Advanced Architectural Design and Research (GSAPP, Columbia University) as La Caixa Foundation. She has been Adjunct professor and visiting lecturer in architecture at various universities in Europe and the USA. Her articles have been published in Routledge; Constelaciones; Rita; HipoTesis; ZARCH, among other scientific journals. She is author of El vidrio: Fronteras y Máscaras and co-editor of Loneliness and the Built Environment. Awarded at the 12th arquia/tesis competition and the Extraordinary UPM PhD. Prize 2015-16. Her architecture work was exhibited at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019 and Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.

Ignacio Senra

Ignacio Senra is a PhD Architect and Adjunct Professor of the Architectural Design Department at the ETSAM (UPM). He graduated from ETSAM in 2006 and Master from Columbia University in 2009, where he received the Honor Award for Excellence in Design. Since 2010 he shares an architectural office with Elisa Sequeros, focusing his research on contemporary housing. He is co-editor of the magazine VARIA (Association of Historians of Architecture and Urbanism).

Angeliki Sioli

Angeliki Sioli is a PhD and Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture of TU Delft. Her research seeks connections between architecture and literature in the public realm of the city, focusing on aspects of atmospheres and embodied perception of place in the urban environment. She has edited the collected volumes The Sound of Architecture: Acoustic Atmospheres in Place (Leuven University press, 2022) and Reading Architecture: Literary Imagination and Architectural Experience (Routledge, 2018). Before joining TU Delft, Sioli taught both undergraduate and graduate courses at McGill University, in Canada; Tec de Monterrey, in Mexico; and Louisiana State University in the US.

Taishin Shiozaki

Taishin Shiozaki is a PhD Architect and Associate Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor and doctoral degrees from the same school in 2000 and 2009 respectively. He established Atelierco with Saeco Kobayashi in 2016, an architectural firm which has been recognized with the following awards: SD Review 2018, Good Design Award 2010, Japan Wood Design Award 2020, Residential Architecture Prize 2022. Among his recent architectural and furniture works: pithouse in Kikuna (2021), house in Kamiikebukuro (2021), ‘patapata’, ‘shimashima’, etc.

Heidi Sohn

Heidi Sohn is Associate Professor of Architecture Theory at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (TU-Delft). She is interim chair and academic coordinator of the Architecture Theory Group in the Theories & Territories Section. Her area of expertise comprises postmodern theories and contemporary continental philosophies, and their intersection with the materialization of the world. Her research focuses on politico-economic and socio-cultural processes, agential power, and their impact on spatio-temporal disciplines and material-discursive practices, including architecture. Her current interests revolve on conceptual problematizations of territory, terraforming and Geophilosophy. She has been visiting professor of Architecture Theory in DIA, Dessau, Germany, and in Umeå School of Architecture, Sweden.

Doris Tarchópulos

Doris Tarchópulos is an Architect specialist in housing, PhD in Urbanism and Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. She was the founder and director of the Institute of Housing and Urbanism, and the Director of the Master’s Program in Urban and Regional Planning at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. She has been the principal investigator of works on the quality index and housing patterns for low-income sectors in Bogota, and on urban Interactions and future mobility in Bogota. Recently she has been co-researcher in works on ‘The Global Street’ and ‘The City and Social Progress’ directed by Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen.

Dirk van den Heuvel

Dirk van den Heuvel is an Associate Professor with the chair of Architecture and Dwelling, TU Delft. He is an editor of Delft Architectural Studies on Housing (DASH). Book publications include Jaap Bakema and the Open Society and Habitat: Ecology Thinking in Architecture. For the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon he curated the exhibition and catalogue Art on Display 1949-69. Scarpa, Bo Bardi, Albini & Helg, Smithsons, Van Eyck, together with Penelope Curtis. He also heads the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, the research collaboration between TU Delft and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. He was curator of the Dutch pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2014, and was awarded a Richard Rogers Fellowship, Harvard GSD in 2017.

Mariana Wilderom

Mariana Wilderom is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo. In 2019 she received a doctoral degree in History and Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism (FAUUSP). She has a bachelor’s in Architecture and Urbanism (FAUUSP, 2009) and a Master’s degree from the same institution (2014). She was a Visiting Researcher at TU Delft (2018) and an Associate Researcher at the Critical Thinking and Contemporary City Research Group (PC3) at FAUUSP. She is co-author of the books Social Urbanism in Latin America (Springer, 2019) and Marcenaria Baraúna: Furniture as Architecture (Olhares, 2017).
The venue
TU DELFT
Faculteit Bouwkunde (Gebouw 8)
Julianalaan 134
2628 BL Delft

view on google maps
Registration
Standard fee: 200€
Early-bird fee: 150€
Post-graduate students: 150€

Registration fee includes:
- Welcome pack
- Publication of the full paper in the proceedings (if accepted in the peer-review process)
- Certificate of attendance
- Coffee breaks
- Closing reception
Accepted papers will be included in the proceedings of the conference, a publication with ISBN that will be available online. Depending on the amount of works submitted, the Scientific Committee will carry out a selection of papers for its oral presentation during the conference.
It will be necessary to be registered for the full paper to be included in the proceedings and considered for oral presentation.

The deadline for early-bird registration is May 24th, 2023
The deadline for standard registration is September 3rd, 2023

Registration will be available from early January 2023.
Contact
General: conference@criticall.es
Scientific secretariat: sec@criticall.es
Administration: admin@criticall.es
Communication: press@criticall.es
Critic|others
The 2023 Critic|all Conference is the fifth edition of a biennial program started in 2014. Here you can see what happened in the previous editions

Critic|all 2021
The fourth edition of Critic|all Conference took place online the 25th and 25th of March 2021.

Call for papers
#dual-ectics

The binary structure of the dual seems to have lost its status. Too simple to hold the complexity of our current world, too attached to the dichotomist schematism that splits positions into for and against. However, the implicit symmetry of the dual should not make us overlook the advantages of taking things in pairs.

Comparison is at the base of any intellectual activity committed to the production of knowledge, because meaning mostly stems from the observation of difference. As a primary scientific device, it generally addresses the task of confirming or refuting a certain hypothesis or theory. By pointing out the coincidence or divergence between the two terms of the comparison, it tends to rely on a logic of causality in order to proceed towards a generalization. Yet, in its barest form, comparison can also pursue a purely interpretive goal. Such is the case of analogy, based on the premise that the two terms paralleled are not at all equal, except from a specific point of view. Analogic reasoning proceeds from the particular towards the particular. From a formal logic stance, it lacks any demonstrative capacity because it relies, not on the probable, but on the plausible. The establishment of a causal relationship, a de facto link between the couple considered, is not as relevant as the things that can be learned when looking at each one in the light of the other.

The pairing of images has a long tradition in the history of art. Pendant paintings consist of two pictures that are compositionally and iconographically related as a pair but are not attached to each other the way hinged diptychs are. They hang or stand side by side but separately and autonomously. The term derives from the French phrase faire pendant, adopted to express the idea of one hanging or depending from the other, and evolved into ‘pandam’ to designate the dual nature of any disposition consisting of two fundamentally similar art pieces but different in detail, which both rely on each other to make full meaning of one another.

Meaningful arguments dealing with a dual structure of the subject matter need to address resemblance and coincidence as well as dissimilitude and divergence. Correlation is always a question of proportion: How much of ‘this’ is present in ‘that’?

The confrontation of two objects, concepts, authors or works does not necessarily imply an oppositional choice. When put into practice by exemplifying exclusionary terms, comparison might only lead to the confirmation of previous convictions and the enunciation of value judgements. Instead, we suggest that placing two things face to face can be both systematic and remain open to unexpected results. A procedure clearly related to the practice of dialogue.

Any dialogue implies two logoi or reasons that agree at least to discuss a disagreement. Plato took this technique to its highest level as a means to push any argumentation forward. Such a dialectical mode of thinking always implies a sense of transformation. Therefore, dialectics raises as a self-conscious process which, by confronting the consequences of the simultaneous affirmation and negation of a proposition, achieves a certain explanation for this contradiction through a synthesis. Today, even if this ‘resolutive’ approach might be questioned, we must still acknowledge one real effect of dialectics: it forces us to remain critical towards reality.

We propose to carry out a critique based on a duality that avoids the oscillatory pendulum of alternative sides as much as it avoids the need to supersede this opposition with a third term. An exercise in sheer comparison, in the midst of today’s growing complexities and multiplicities, that might lead to a deeper understanding of our discipline.

The 4th edition of the Critic|all Conference welcomes contributions that critically address coupled case studies in a way that brings about a new meaning for any of the two terms compared. We expect interpretive work that draws new relations between things.
The most basic structure should present the cases, explain the reasons that justify the comparison, support them with arguments in the main body and bring the paper to a conclusion.

Papers must be limited to 5000 words, written in English and preceded by a 300-word abstract. Peer reviewing will be carried out in two phases.

Abstract deadline: 10 March 2020
Full-paper deadline: 10 June 2020

Critic|all is an initiative lead by the Architectural Design Department of Madrid ETSAM–UPM. The current edition of this two-day conference is organized in collaboration with FAU–USP and will be held in São Paulo on the 24–25 September 2020. This research event aims to bring together both young and established scholars from every discipline dealing with architectural thought, including approaches from history, historiography, theory or design.

All accepted contributions will be included in the digital proceedings of the conference, a publication with ISBN that will be given to the registered participants and also be available online. Depending on the amount of works submitted, the Scientific Committee will carry out a selection of papers for presentation during the conference.

You can download the full Call for Papers here

Program

thursday 25th

* All schedule indicates local time Sao Paolo. Brazil. (UTC/GMT -3 hours)

09:00 – 09:30 Welcome and Presentation

09:30 – 10:30 Key-note speaker. Sven-Olov Wallenstein. Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University, Stockholm.

10:45 – 12:15 panel #1. The dialectics of the case I

10:45 “`Disprogramming`, `Plan-less`, `Non-movement`, `No Style`: Dialectic Strategies in the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965–2019)”. Cathelijne Nuijsink (ETH Zürich. Switzerland)

11:00 “(Post) Studio architecture: Buren VS Warhol”. Guillermo Lockhart (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ETSAM, Madrid, Spain)

11:15 “A Filter to the Frame – from the fenêtre en longueur to the finestra arredata”. Angelica Ponzio (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Su, Porto Alegre. Brazil). Andrea Machado (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Su, Porto Alegre. Brazil)

11:30 “Between a house and a museum: Redefining an emerging typology of exhibition”. Bárbara Salazar (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Santiago. Chile)

11:45 Discussion. Conducted by: Vanessa Grossman (TUDelft)

12:15 – 13:00 Lunch time

13:00 – 14:30 panel #2. The dialectics of the case II

13:00 “Trust in brick: parallels between Dieste and Benítez/Cabral”. Suelen Camerin (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

13:15 “The In-between practice. La Fragua and Previ by Germán Samper Gnecco (1958-1969)”. Juan Alejandro Saldarriaga Sierra (Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Medellín. Colombia).

13:30 “The Sesc Project: A Tale of Two Units”. Carlos Eduardo Comas (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

13:45 “Traveling Dome. Claims and climbs over Lebanese and Brazilian domes”. Fernanda Carlovich (Columbia University. New York. EEUU)

14:00 Discussion. Conducted by: Marina Correia (UFRJ)

14:30 – 14:45 Break (15’)

14:45 – 16:15 panel #3. Identity Construction (through difference) I

14:45 “Being Public in Private Spaces and Vice Versa: Brazilian Art and Architecture in the Late 1960s”. Guilherme Wisnik (São Paulo State University, USP. Brazil)

15:00 “(Dis)continuities in the treatment of the public-private interface in social housing produced in Brazil and Portugal”. Luana Cavalcante (University of Porto. Portugal). Raquel Paulino (University of Porto. Portugal). Ricardo Paiva (Federal University of Ceará. Brazil)

15:15 “Blurring the map: Depicting the city of Curitiba as both Spectacle and Experience”. Daniela Moro (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

15:30 “Urban Predation: the symbolic economy of the pixo”. Alice Queiroz (Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais, Brazil). Eric Crevels (Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft, Netherlands)

15:45 Discussion. Conducted by: Nelson Mota (TUDelft)

16:15 – 16:30 Break (15’)

16:30 – 18:00 panel #4. Identity Construction (through difference) II

16:30 «The Dialectics of National and International in Oscar Niemeyer’s career: on his connections in the United States of America (1938-1947)». Rafael Urano Frajndlich (Unicamp. Campinas. Brazil). Gabriel Romero (Unicamp. Campinas. Brazil). Fernando Cavichioli (Unicamp. Campinas. Brazil)

16:45 “Adaptation: Ubiquitous and Monofunctional Modernist Residential District”. Adriana Pablos (GSD Harvard. Cambridge. EEUU)

17:00 “From one Louvre to another: cultural constructs of the self through the other”. Jale Sari (Yasar University. Turkey)

17:15 “Åzone Futures Market. Insert Cåin to Start Playing”. Jesús Utrillas Acerete (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain)

17:30 Discussion. Conducted by: Marcos Rosa (FAUUSP)

18:00 – 18:30 Break (30’)

18:30 – 19:30 Key-note speaker. Gareth Doherty. Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program. GSD. Harvard.

friday 26th

* All schedule indicates local time Sao Paolo. Brazil. (UTC/GMT -3 hours)

09:30 – 10:30 Key-note speaker. Carmen Espegel. Full Professor Architectural Design Department and Director of the Master in Advanced Architectural Design MPAA. ETSAM-UPM.

10:30 – 10:45 Break (15’)

10:45 – 12:15 panel #5. Critical Dualities (Methodologies)

10:45 “Speculations on (Con)temporary Domestic Architecture: Politics, Domesticity, and the Irrelevance of Architecture in Two Rolling Projects”. Marco Salazar (Universidad Central del Ecuador. Quito. Ecuador)

11:00 “Learning by comparing”. Magda Mària, (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Barcelona. Spain). Silvia Musquera (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Barcelona. Spain)

11:15 “The architect’s book as self-promotion and self-production: contrasting Rem Koolhaas S, M, L, XL and Bjarke Ingel’s Yes is More”. Gabriel Elias de Souza (Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. UFRRJ. Brazil)

11:30 “Spatial representation and architectural critique: the case of Roberto Rossellini and Centre Pompidou”. Nikola Matevski (University of São Paulo. Brazil))

11:45 Discussion. Conducted by: Sergio Martín Blas (ETSAM-UPM).

12:15 – 13:00 Lunch time

13:00 – 14:30 panel #6. Conceptual Constructions (through difference)

13:00 “USA Neighbourhood Unit vs USSR Microrayon: A Cold War battle for the ultimate urban project of the twentieth century”. Martin Cajade (Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo. FADU. Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay)

13:15 “Nature and Reversed Mimesis in Toyo Ito’s Architecture”. Silvana Castro Nicolli (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro. PUC-Rio. Brazil)

13:30 “Decomposition of the hierarchical system: dualities in SANAA architecture” Sergio Motomura (State University of Londrina. Brazil). Rovenir Duarte (State University of Londrina. Brazil)

13:45 Discussion. Conducted by: Guiomar Martín (ETSAM-UPM)

14:15 – 14:45 Break (30’)

14:45 – 16:15 panel #7. Extreme Dualities (A test of the methodology)

14:45 “Elements of Architecture and Choreographic Objects: a new critical viewpoint”. Maria Paula Recena (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

15:00 “Eisenman e Reich: confluences and divergences between formal operations”. Felipe Ferla Da Costa (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil). Maria Paula Recena (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

15:15 “A Radical Dual-ectics of Urban Formulation. Dashilar as a Heterotopic Partner to the Forbidden City”. Peng Xue (University of Edinburgh. United Kingdom)

15:30 “Corset and Domestic Space: Ortho-architectural Exoskeletons in the Disciplinary Era”. Daniel Movilla (Umeå University. Sweden)

15:45 Discussion. Conducted by: Ignacio Senra (ETSAM-UPM)

16:15 – 16:30 Break (15′)

16:30 – 17:30 Key-note speaker. Tom Avermaete. Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design. ETH Zürich.

Scientific Committee
Directors
Silvia Colmenares
Leandro Medrano

Scientific Committee
Luis Rojo (Coordinator of the Scientific Committee)
Luiz Recamán (Coordinator of the Scientific Committee)
Juan Herreros
Carmen Espegel
Andrés Cánovas
Nicolás Maruri
Nelson Mota
Jesús Ulargui
Marta Caldeira
José Aragüez
Fernando Lara
Jesús Vassallo
Maria José Pizarro
Marina Correia
Fernando Rodríguez
Ruy Sardinha Lopes
Sergio Martín Blas
Ricardo Fabbrini
Nieves Mestre
Claudia Piantá Costa Cabral
Ignacio Senra
Maria Cristina Nascentes Cabral
Otavio Leonidio
Eduardo Roig
Ivo Girotto
Juan Elvira
Katrin Rappl
Guiomar Martín
Lizete Maria Rubano
Enrique de Teresa
Marcos Rosa
Enrique Encabo
Vanessa Grosman
Javier Maroto
Alberto Nicolau

Digital Proceedings

¡Descarga ahora!
Critic|all 2018
The third edition of Critic|all Conference took place on the 26th and 27th of April 2018 at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Call for papers
#un-thology

While Theory is produced, the History of Theory has to be constructed. Such an ambitious scope has been achieved by many different means but, among those, Anthology stands out as an effective instrument to present and connect apparently autonomous discourses in a way that actually describes a time-lapse situation. It performs a diagnosis.

The act of collecting –flowers, poems or architectural theory pieces [1]– is not innocent. Being the written equivalent of the museum, Anthologies curate knowledge, providing meaning for a collection of fragments. Not only Anthology is a genre that, as Sylvia Lavin once pointed, creates a genealogy for the present [2], but also this kind of selected inventory of the past always claims a certain agenda for the future.

Paradoxically, the advent of what has been called ‘the end of theory’ in the late 90’s ran parallel to the publication of the two most significant anthologies that can be identified until now. The edited volume by Joan Ockman [3] was born as seminar material and covers the period from 1943 to 1968. The one compiled by Michael Hays [4] starts precisely at that point and, despite the openness implied in its title, concludes around 1993. Both anthologies largely differ in scope and purpose: while Ockman interest lays in the unveiling of modernism continuities under the more general concept of ‘culture’, Hays collection is a clear call to the critical function of ‘theory’ as a mode of resistance to, and mediation with, the sociopolitical context in which it is produced.

Certainly there are some other architectural text compilations that could be cited here, but only to load the scale towards the American commanded construction of the History of Theory, and in any case, none of them go hardly beyond the turn of the millennium. This would be the case of Kate Nesbit’s volume advocating for a ‘new’ agenda or the one edited by Neil Leach [5] providing source texts form outside the discipline. The same could be stated of the two-volume collection curated by Francis Mallgrave [6] that unfolds in a holistic manner from Vitruvius to the first years of the 21st Century. The only exception to these western-anglo-saxon oriented compilations is The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory [7], which addresses many contemporary debates from a wide variety of geographical and cultural points of view, resulting in a complex structure that nevertheless cannot be called an anthology, strictly speaking.

Amid this panorama, we put forward the following question: Is Anthology an obsolete instrument for current times or does it contain some kind of purpose? In front of the globalized flow of information, whether generated or consumed in endless forms of exchange and heterogeneous media, which parameters should we apply to handle relevance, content or completeness?

The construction of the next index of Theory will have to deal with the very idea of its usefulness, either as a classifying device, an editing instrument or the enhancement of an agenda. The impossibility of covering the whole spectrum of strands urges to confess partiality before taking the first step, loosing therefore the aspirations of encyclopaedic completeness that anthologies usually claim. It would be an impossible collection: never finished and, for this very reason, carrying out a critical stance towards the genre as an academic chimera.

Therefore, if we were to compile such an alternative Un-thology, which criteria should be implemented to make the choices of relevant texts? Should we dive into the endless ocean of officially indexed papers that grows exponentially in a monthly base? Are editorial statements still capable of identifying the new directions in architectural thought? How to deal with amateur writers in relation to institutionalized research conduits? What would be the rate of practicing architects authors vs other scholarship profiles?

[1] The etymological origin of the word ‘anthology’ comes from ἄνθος (ánthos, “flower, blossom”) + λόγος (lógos, “account”).
[2] Lavin, Sylvia. “Theory into History, or The Will to Anthology”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol. 58, No. 3, Architectural History 1999/2000 (Sep., 1999), pp. 494-499.
[3] Ockman, Joan. Architecture culture 1943-1968: a documentary anthology. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1993.
[4] Hays, K. Michael. Architecture Theory, Since 1968. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1998.
[5] Nesbitt, Kate. Theorizing a new agenda for architecture: an anthology of architectural theory 1965-1995. New York: Princenton Architectural Press, 1996.
[6] Mallgrave, Harry Francis. Architectural Theory. Vol. 1, An anthology from Vitruvius to 1870. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. Mallgrave, Harry Francis, and Christina Contandriopoulos. Architectural Theory. Volume 2. An anthology from 1871-2005. Malden: Blackwell, 2008.
[7] Crysler, C. Greig, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen. The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory. London: SAGE, 2008.

The 3rd edition of the Critic|all Conference welcomes contributions that critically address these and other questions related to the proposed topic. We expect to receive two types of materials:

Con-texts

Short introductory essays that provide a context for a text dated between 1993 and the present and that is credited to be a significant spot in the recent history of architectural theory. In addition to the necessary review of what has already been said about the text, the paper should develop original arguments and clearly state the reasons why it should be included in a hypothetical Un-thology. We do not expect mere laudatory comments, but new insights on already published material.

The original text must not exceed 5.000 words, and should accompany the submittal. Justified excerptions are allowed. Papers should be 2.000 words length and must be written in English, unless the language of the source text is Spanish. Papers dealing with originals in any other language must provide a translation of it into English and should also be written in English.

No abstract is needed. Peer reviewing will be carried out in a single phase taking into consideration the full-paper submittal.

Full-paper Deadline: 1 February 2018

Research Articles

Well constructed essays than engage with the problematization of the concept of Anthology, whether confronting two opposite discourses, analyzing the structure of previous compilations or discussing the procedures of architectural ideas dissemination. We expect interpretive work that draws new relations between things. The most basic form of this type of manuscript should present a thesis, back it up with arguments in the supporting body paragraphs and then bring the paper to a conclusion.

Papers should be 5.000 words length and must be written in English and will be preceded by a 300 words Abstract. Peer reviewing will be carried out in two phases.

Abstract Deadline: 8 November 2017

Full-paper Deadline: 1 February 2018

Length: 5.000 words max.

Length: 2.000 words max.

You can download the full Call for Papers here
Program
Thursday 26th April 2018

10:00 – 10:30 Accreditations & Welcome Pack

10:30 – 11:00Welcome and Presentation
Silvia Colmenares + Luis Rojo. Directors Critic|all

11:00 – 13:30con-texts [this section will take place in Spanish]

11:00 “Teóricos francotiradores. La posibilidad de un pensamiento dibujado como práctica específicamente arquitectónica” | Lina Toro, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain and IE School of Architecture and Design, Dep. Projects, IE University, Segovia, Spain

11:08“Poché. Historia y vigencia de una idea” | Raúl Castellanos, Universitat Politècnica de València, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Valencia, Spain

11:16 “Ways of seeing” | Jorge Borondo, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Barcelona, Spain

11:24“Notas sobre una arquitectura líquida” | Alvaro Moreno, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

11:32“Aftermath” | Rodrigo Rubio, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

11:40“Artefactos energéticos: la energía como parámetro proyectual” | Martino Peña, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Arquitectura y Tecnología de la Edificación, ETSAE, Cartagena, España

11:48“Paradoxes of Domesticity and Modernity” | Elena Martínez Millana, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

11:56“Play to the Gallery” | Esteban Salcedo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

12:04“Rincones de la función” | Damián Pluganou, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

12:12“Con P de Pragmatismo” | Luz Carruthers, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

12:20“Martha Stewart. A contemporary icon” | Luis Moreda, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

12:28“Proyectos encubiertos: entrevistas entre arquitectos” | Antonio Cantero, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

12:36“Estímulos y reacciones, deseos y afectos, fibras e hilos intencionales” | Luis Navarro, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

12:45 Discussion

13:30 – 14:30 Lunch time

14:30 – 16:00 panel #1. Anthology problematized

14:30 “Anthology is ontology. The power of selection and the ‘worldmaking’” | Alessandro Canevari, Università degli Studi di Genova, dAD, Genova, Italy

14:45“Anthology as collection: Althusser vs. Benjamin” | Marcos Pantaleón, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Madrid, Spain

15:00 “Theorem. A case for an Anthology today” | Giacomo Pala, Institute of Architectural Theory (Architekturtheorie), Innsbruck, Austria

15:15“Historicizing the desire to historicize” | Carlos Tapia Martín + Jorge Minguet Medina, Grupo de Investigación OUT_Arquías. Departamento de Historia, Teoría y Composición Arquitectónicas. ETS Arquitectura, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

15:30 Discussion | Moderators: Ignacio Borrego, Full Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin. Sergio Martín Blas, Associate Teacher. Architectural Design Department, ETSAM (UPM)

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 – 17:45 panel #2. The Spanish perspective

16:30 “Reassessing Spanish Modernity Discourses through Mass Media” | María Antón Barco + Verónica Meléndez, ESNE, Madrid, Spain

16:45“Architectural theory anthologies from a Spanish perspective” | Aida González Llavona, Universidad de Castilla La-Mancha, Escuela de Arquitectura de Toledo, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Área de Historia y Composición, Toledo, Spain

17:00 “Writings on Photography and Modern Architecture in Spain. A critical reading of a Contemporary Anthology” | Amparo Bernal + Iñaki Bergera, University of Burgos, Graphic Expression Department, Polytechnic School, Burgos, Spain / University of Zaragoza, Architecture Department, School of Engineering and Architecture, Zaragoza, Spain

17:15 Discussion | Moderators: Carmen Espegel, Tenured Professor Architectural Design Department, ETSAM (UPM). Jesús Ulargui, Tenured Professor Architectural Design Department, ETSAM (UPM).

Friday 27th April 2018

10:00 – 11:30 panel #3. Anthology today

10:00 “Space and the otherness. An anthology” | Leandro Medrano + Luiz Recamán + Mariana Wilderom + Raphael Grazziano , University of São Paulo, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, History of Architecture and Project Aesthetics Department, São Paulo, Brazil

10:15 “Practical theorization in the digital era” | Belén Butragueño + Javier Raposo + Mariasun Salgado, UPM, Department of Architectural Graphic Ideation, School of Architecture (ETSAM), Madrid, Spain

10:30 “Catching glimpses. The fragment-anthology as a strategy for architectural research” | Mattias Kärrholm + Paulina Prieto + Rodrigo Delso, Lund University, Architecture and the Built Environment, Lund, Sweden, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Spain

10:45 “Towards a (new) Historiography of Architecture for a Digital Age” | Guido Cimadomo + Vishal Shahdadpuri Aswani + Rubén García Rubio, Universidad de Málaga, Departamento Arte y Arquitectura, ETS Arquitectura, Málaga, Spain and Al Ghurair University, College of Design, Dubai, Emirates Arab United

11:00 Discussion | Moderators: Juan Elvira, Assistant Professor Architectural Design Department, ETSAM (UPM). Lluis J. Liñán, Teacher at the Master in Advanced Architectural Projects, ETSAM (UPM)

11:30 – 12:30 Coffee Break

12:30 – 14:00 Key-note speaker

“Configuring a discipline. Anthologies in architectural theory” | Hilde Heynen, Full Professor Architectural Theory. University of Leuven. KU LEUVEN. Belgium.

14:00 Closing cocktai
Scientific Committee
Direction
Silvia Colmenares
Luis Rojo

Scientific Committee
Juan Herreros
Sylvia Lavin
Hilde Heynen
James Graham
Valéry Didelon
Federico Soriano
Milla Hernández Pezzi
Carmen Espegel
Carmen Martínez Arroyo
Nicolás Maruri
Jesús Ulargui
Juan Elvira
Maria José Pizarro
Fernando Rodríguez
Sergio Martín Blas
Diego García Setién
Nieves Mestre
José Aragüez
Jesús Vassallo
Juan Ruescas
Ignacio Senra
Ignacio Borrego

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Critic|all 2016
The second edition of Critic|all Conference took place from the 20th to the 22nd of June 2016 at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Call for papers
#out-onomy

In its second edition, Critic|all proposes as subject matter the reflection on the considerations that architectural specificity has kept in relation to the architectural discipline itself. Faced with a vision that believes that architecture cannot be an isolated medium, that is, autonomous – not only regarding social culture but above all, the social, political and economic environment of the world in which it is immersed, – we find those visions that, in the opposite way, consider that the architectural discipline is strictly about herself, and therefore employs a self language whose confirmation is determined by a collection of very defined historical forms.

However, there is only one set of facts, ideas, forms and styles that over time grows larger. All of them belong to us and any of them can be interpreted or seen as an architectural event. And there are infinite paths of interpretation of those facts, ideas, shapes and styles. There are those which make use of critical tools outside the own instrumental of the architectural discipline, inheritors of other intellectual and scientific fields. Others, instead, claim the delimitation of the discipline itself to be the main scope of the critical task.

We propose the term out-tomy as a new framework to overcome this classic dichotomy. Discipline is no longer a place, or reserve that the ‘academy’ defines, setting a boundary between the self and the alien. It is a gaze, a reading or modification. It is a glance that is both outside and inside at the same time, which is stranger to the architectural discipline but also understands it.

The autonomy of architecture is not in its technologies or methodologies. It is a capacity of thought to respond freed from pre-established theories, critically untethered to specific techniques, exclusively catering for the systematic managed and chosen for each time. That autonomy requires us to put ourselves out of the matter we want to analyze, manipulate or produce. At the same time we know we cannot make decisions without being directly involved in that matter. It does not act on things but between things, right in the heart of the matter.

The term out-tomy combines an internal autonomy, described from within as the preservation of certain discipline that is memory, is history and it is also specific technique, with an external autonomy, that is defined from the outside and influenced by other fields and cultures, attentive to society, politics and economy, the forces that rule the world. Anyone overrides the other but both have merged into a specifically contemporary gaze.

Between the desire of ‘unit’ and ‘self-referral order’ as a translation of the concept of discipline and the pursuit of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘autonomy of the parts’ as translation of the importance of the accurate and current, the dichotomy is perfectly solved as long as we recognize that both visions have created a situation where they no longer confront each other but simultaneously blend.

This double condition of placing ourselves at both sides of the limit, seeing interior and exterior at the same place, of being outside because of looking from the inside and vice versa, is a contemporary feature that we want to collect, display and confirm at this conference.

Program
Monday 20th June 2016

10:00 – 11:40 Accreditations & Welcome Pack

12:00 – 12:30 Welcome and Presentation
Luis Maldonado, Director de la ETSAM + Federico Soriano, Director de DPA.

12:30 – 14:00 Key-note speaker
Anthony Vidler  “Architecture Exposed: From Panoptic Discipline to Global Heteronomy”
Professor of Architecture School of Architecture The Cooper Union
Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History, Yale University, (Spring)

14:00 Lunch time

16:00 – 20:00 panel #1 [ disciplinary debates ]

16:00 “A World Apart. Architectural Autonomy as Artistic Freedom”
Rafael Gómez-Moriana Korn
University of Calgary, EVDS, Architecture term-abroad program, Barcelona, Spain.

16:20 “Revisiting the debate around autonomy in architecture. A genealogy”
Marianna Charitonidou
University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, Laboratoire «Histoire des arts et représentations»+National Technical University of Athens, School of Architecture.

16:40 “Disciplinary Out-Tonomy. On the Hermeneutics of Architectural Translation”
Giacomo Pala
University of Innsbruck, Institute of Urban Design, Innsbruck, Austria + Scuola Politecnica di Genova, Dipartimento di Architettura, Genova, Italy.

17:00 “Between autonomy and heteronomy. A critical inquiry into the grid of folies at Parc de La Villette”
Guiomar Martín Domínguez
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

17:20 “The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture: Peter Eisenman’s Analytical Method”
Francesco Coppolecchia + Luca Guido
Independent scholars, Molfetta, Italy.

17:40 “Architecture on Architecture. Autonomy as a transformative competence”
Karen Olesen
Aarhus School of Architecture, Aarhus, Denmark

18:00 Break

18:30 Invited speaker and panel leader
Francesco Marullo. “Architecture as Theme. Rationalism and Abstraction in Oswald Mathias Ungers’ Grossformen.”
Architect, Researcher, Ph.D. TUDelft | The City as a Project

19:00 Discussion

Tuesday 21st June 2016

10:00 – 14:00 panel #2 [ side effects ]

10:00 “Interferencias del arte en la escala doméstica”
Ángela Juarranz Serrano
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:20 “El arquitecto como editor. Influencia del comisariado artístico y la crítica literaria en Delirious New York”
Ignacio Senra Fernández-Miranda
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:40 “Sobreexposición. El “curator” como montador del pensamiento arquitectónico contemporáneo”
Felipe Reyno Capurro
FADU, Facultad de Arquitectura Diseño y Urbanismo, Montevideo, Uruguay. ETSAM, Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos, Universidad Politécnica, Madrid, España

11:00 “Pactos ficcionales con la arquitectura. Los videojuegos (y su teoría) como herramienta para desmantelar las ficciones de la arquitectura cotidiana”
Gaizka Altuna Charterina
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

11:20 “Pas de deux: an attempt to define architecture’s specificity and out-tomy”
Susana Ventura
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto (FAUP),Portugal

11:40 Break

12:00 Invited speaker and panel leader
Marina Otero Verzier “Circulating Borders: The Architecture of Global Cultural Institutions”
Head of Research and Development, HNI
Chief Curator with the After Belonging Agency, OAT’16

12:30 Discussion

Lunch time

16:00 – 20:00 panel #3 [ redescriptions ]

16:00 “Prácticas representacionales críticas. Límite y ruptura de la autonomía arquitectónica”
Felipe Corvalán Tapia
Universidad de Chile, Departamento de Arquitectura.

16:20 “Antifragilidad. La entropía operativa”
Borja Lomas Rodríguez
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

16:40 “Copyright en el rastro. De la protección del dibujo a la globalización de la imagen”
Lluis Juan Liñán
Rice University, School of Architecture, Houston, TX, EEUU.

17:00 “Metamodernismo. La última dialéctica”
Luis Bretón Belloso
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

17:20 “El desprecio del estatuto de la arquitectura: La transgresión funda la regla”
Jorge Minguet Medina+Carlos Tapia Martín
ETSA Sevilla. Grupo de Investigación OUT_Arquías. Dpto. de Historia, Teoría y Composición Arquitectónicas.

17:40 Break

18:00 Invited speaker and panel leader
Carlos Arroyo “Redescripciones, artealizaciones y otras sesquipedalias”
Profesor en la Universidad Europea de Madrid

18:30 Discussion

Wednesday 22nd June 2016

10:00 – 20:00 panel #4 [ Dealing with reality ]

10:00 “La política del Frente Popular francés en la arquitectura de Charlotte Perriand y Eileen Gray”
María Pura Moreno Moreno
Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena. Departamento de Arquitectura y Tecnología de la Edificación.

10:20 “Ciudad accidental: La distancia contemporánea entre proyecto y experiencia”
José Ignacio Vielma Cabruja
Universidad de Chile, Departamento de Arquitectura, Santiago, Chile

10:40 “Is Dashilar a Paradigm? Re-appraise the notion of autonomy in architecture”
Xue, Peng
The University of Edinburgh, ESALA (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture), UK.

11:00 “Critical roles of Architecture. The endemic of labour in the favela dwelling system: Towards a critique on its architectural autonomy”
Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti
TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment, Dwelling, Delft, Netherlands

11:20 “El diablo viste de Prada. Economía de mercado, globalización y arquitectura”
Gonzalo Basulto Calvo
Laboratorio de Paisajes Arquitectónicos Patrimoniales y Culturales, Dpto de Teoría de la Arquitectura y Proyectos Arquitectónicos, ETSA Valladolid
Lucía de Blas Noval
Instituto Universitario de Urbanística, Departamento de Representación y Urbanismo. ETSA Valladolid

11:40 Break

12:00 Ponente invitado y responsable de panel | Invited speaker and panel leader
Luis Rojo  “Yes, but is reality given or constructed?”
Profesor Ayudante Doctor. Dpto. Proyectos Arquitectónicos. Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid.

12:30 Discussion

Lunch time

16:00 – 17:30 Conferenciante invitado | Key-note speaker
Sarah Whiting “Looking Good”
William Ward Watkin Professor and Dean of the Rice School of Architecture

18:00 – 19:00 Final debate
(Key-note and Invited speakers)

Closing cocktail

Scientific Committee
Organizers
Direction: Federico Soriano
General Coordination: Silvia Colmenares
Assistant to General Coordination: Sálvora Feliz

Scientific Committee
Amadeu Santacana
Federico Soriano
Luis Rojo
Luz Paz Agras
Nuria Álvarez Lombardero
Rafael Pina

Reviewers
Alejandro Virseda
Almudena Ribot
Ana Fernando Magarzo
Ángel Martínez García de Posada
Antonio Miranda
Ariadna Perich
Arturo Blanco
David Archilla
Debora Domingo
Emilia Hernández Pezzi
Fernando Casqueiro
Fernando Rodríguez
Francisco García Triviño
Ginés Garrido
Ignacio Borrego
Iñaki Carnicero
Jacobo García-Germán
Jesús Vasallo
José Jaraiz
Maria Teresa Muñoz
Marta Pelegrín
María Hurtado de Mendoza
Mª José Pizarro
Nicolás Maruri
Paloma Gil
Raul Castellanos
Raúl Del Valle
Santiago de Molina
Verónica Meléndez

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Critic|all 2014
The first edition of Critic|all Conference took place from the 12th to the 14th of June 2014 at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Call for Papers
utopian-pragmatism
pragmatic-utopianism

As we approach the present, the ambiguity of the real escapes traditional historiographical classifications. In recent years, the difficulty involved in working in an increasingly ambiguous environment has resulted in an atlas multiplication that has awakened our desire to become collectors, whilst returning the leading role to history and encouraging examination of the taxonomies of the present. On his particular journey, the architect has become a curator, a historian, an analyst, and an observer. Whilst we acknowledge both the necessity and the interest of the architect as an expanded figure, we must be aware of the risk entailed in pushing certain boundaries that may radically transform the ways in which architecture has traditionally approached its relationship to the real- that is, the tension generated by the project.

Today, and tomorrow, we discover radical action upon the everyday using the tools of the ordinary, the trivial, and the infra-ordinary. We understand that the best intellectual stance is that which adopts the most chimerical ideas when they interfere with ordinary, everyday life, disguised as normality.

Seeking to transcend the dichotomy between pragmatism and utopia, the 1^stInternational Conference on Architectural Design and Criticism makes an appeal for criticism, a critical call whose aim is to examine and work on the ambiguous field of possibilities that emerge from the intersection of the concepts of pragmatic-utopianism and utopian-pragmatism. In order to do so, three main research areas have been defined.

TOPICS

#1 POSITIONS

Positions aims to approach the main critical positionings that configure the current intellectual landscape, identifying both their pragmatic aspects and their utopian aspirations. Which authors have been able to operate significant change on architectural practice in the past and the present? What is the current relevance of the areas of interest defined by their texts?

#2 METHODS

Methods seeks to identify different approaches to architectural criticism and practice from a purely disciplinary approach, as well as its comparison to other areas of knowledge. Could the theoretical definition of architectural research be dependent on such a methodological differentiation?

#3 FORMATS

Formats investigates the means by which architectural criticism is both disseminated and assimilated, understanding that the way in which thought is transmitted needs to be followed by an individual project. To what extent can potential, new formats of thought generate a real debate where both positionings and approaches can be contested or reasserted?

Program
Thursday 12th June 2014

09:30 – 10:00 Welcome and Presentation
SALÓN DE ACTOS Luis Maldonado . Director de la ETSAM + Federico Soriano. Director de DPA.

10:00 – 12:30 positions #1 [ utopias and manifestos ]
SALA 1 working-table leader: David Cohn

10:00 “Transferencias desde el manifiesto a la teoría arquitectónica contemporánea”
Beatriz Villanueva Cajide
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:25 “Yona Friedman: utopías realizadas desde la Ville Spatiale”
Ramón Durántez Fernández
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:50 “Revisiting the encounters of the social concern with the utopian aspirations: is pragmatist imagination or utopian realism the way to follow?”
Marianna Charitonidou
National Technical University of Athens, School of Architecture

11:15 “Utopías de reconstrucción”
Enrique Fernández-Vivancos
CEU-UCH, ESET Valencia

11:40 Debate | Discussion

12:30 – 13:00 Coffee-break

13:00 – 14:30 Key-note speaker
SALÓN DE ACTOS Joan Ockman

14:30 – 16:30 Lunch

16:30 – 19:00 methods #1 [ analogical vs. digital ]
SALA 1 – working-table leader: David Archilla

16:30 “Methods of representation. A clarification of Critical Terminology”
James Heard
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

16:55 “Arquitectura en la era de la máquina digital. Don’t be my mirror”
Polyxeni Mantzou + Graziella Trovato
DUTH, School of Architecture, Xanthi, Greece; ETSAM

17:20 “Sobre el problema de la Atmósfera en el proyecto arquitectónico”
Rafael Beneytez
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

17:45 Discussion

16:30 – 19:00 formats #1 [ visual culture and media ]
SALA 2 working-table leader: Paula V. Álvarez

16:30 “Marcel Duchamp. Rompiendo las reglas del espacio.”
Luz Paz Agras
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de A Coruña. The Bartlett School of Architecture.

16:55 “Acciones invisibles detrás de S,M,L,XL. Distracción, Ensayo e Infiltración”
Verónica Meléndez
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

17:20 “Herramientas audiovisuales para explorar escenarios arquitectónicos contemporáneos”
Ramiro Losada
Universidad Europea de Madrid

17:45 “El ensayo visual como método crítico en arquitectura”
Ariadna Perich
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona

18:10 Discusión

23:00 – Welcome drink

Friday 13th June 2014

10:00 – 12:30 methods #2 [ design methodology ]
SALA 1 working-table leader: Manuel Gausa

10:00 “Los puntos críticos: un estudio catastrófico de la arquitectura”
Luis Bretón
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:25 “The possibilities of “architectural re-enactments” as a critical architectural practice”
Alice Haddad
Vrije Universiteit, Research Master in Visual Arts, Media and Architecture, Ámsterdam

10:50 “Arquitectura hacking. El error como mecanismo de intrusión en sistemas arquitectónicos existentes”
Francisco García Triviño
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

11:15 “Star-quitectura y Magia de Cerca”
Oscar Pedrós + Sonia Vázquez + Juan I. Prieto
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de A Coruña

11:40 Discussion

10:00 – 12:30 methods #3 [ criticism methodology ]
SALA 2 working-table leader: Paloma Gil

10:00 “ ‘Negatives Denken’. Contraespacios e impolítica para una revisión (¿crítica?) del estatuto de la arquitectura.”
Carlos Tapia + Marta López
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Sevilla

10:25 “Eficacia perezosa”
José Manuel López Ujaque
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:50 “Debajo del puente. Introducción a los secretos de lo genérico para producir condiciones urbanas deseables”
Iago Carro
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de A Coruña

11:15 “Collapsed City”
Ignacio Ruiz Allen
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

11:40 Discussion

12:30 – 13:00 Coffee-break

13:00 – 14:30 Key-note speaker
SALÓN DE ACTOS
Fernando Casto Flórez «De vuelta a las cárceles. Algunas cuestiones fronterizas de la arquitectura y el arte contemporáneo»

14:30 – 16:30 Lunch

16:30 – 19:00 methods #4 [ criticism methodology ]
SALA 1 working-table leader: Santiago de Molina

16:30 “Cruces de caminos que se saludan. Herramientas en la arquitectura de Miralles-Pinós”
Arturo Blanco + Antonio Juárez + Aurora Fernández
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

16:55 “La crítica instrucciones de uso”
Ana Fernando Magarzo
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

17:20 “El mundo escondido de C. Price. Claves para el entendimiento de utopías factibles”
Marcela Aragüez
Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. Bartlett Faculty of the Built environment.

17:45 “El arquitecto como coleccionista”
María Antón-Barco
Universidad San Pablo CEU, Departamento de Arquitectura y Diseño, EPS

18:10 Discussion

16:30 – 19:00 formats #2 [ visual culture and media ]
SALA 2 working-table leader: Almudena Ribot

16:30 “¿Y tú cómo lo ves? Hacia una crítica visual de la arquitectura”
Jesús Marina + Elena Morón
Facultad de Filosofía. Universidad de Granada + ETSA Sevilla

16:55 “Architectural criticism in the age of social networks”
Davide Tommaso Ferrando
Politécnico di Torino

17:20 “El cine de Jacques Tati como herramienta de crítica de la arquitectura moderna”
Helia de San Nicolás
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

17:45 “Crítica gráfica: la práctica de un ensayo visual”
Yolanda Ortega
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona

18:10 Discussion

19:00 – 20:00 MPAA L4 Exhibitions opening
VESTÍBULO PRINCIPAL | MAIN HALL

Saturday 14th June 2014

10:00 – 12:30 positions #2 [ the post-critical ]
SALA 1 working-table leader: Françoise Fromonot

10:00 “The prospect for architectural criticality after the fictitious Post-Critical stalemate”
José Antonio Aragüez
Princeton University

10:25 “The Challenges of Urban Activism in the New Neoliberal Context”
Jon Geib
Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Architecture, Gothenburg, Sweden

10:50 “Post-critical China: There is no Author, just Content!”
Christopher Brisbin
University of South Australia, School of Art, Architecture and Design

11:15 “The «heterotopias» as cult of capitalism”
Pedro Bustamante
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

11:40 Discussion

10:00 – 12:30 positions #3 [ the urban condition ]
SALA 2 working-table leader: Jacobo García-Germán

10:00 “La Ciudad Utópica en los Centros Históricos”
Cristina Jódar + Ana Irene Jódar
ETSA de Alicante + ETSA Murcia

10:25 “Iconic Buildings and City Marketing: Strategies for the Central Area of São Paulo, Brazil”
Leandro Medrano + Geise Pasquotto
FAU-USP. São Paulo, Brasil.

10:50 “Infraestructuras para una revolución”
Fernando Rodríguez
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

11:15 Discussion

12:30 – 13:00 Coffee-break

13:00 – 14:30 Key-note speaker
SALÓN DE ACTOS
Reinhold Martin » Horizons of Thought: The Realism of Utopia «

14:30 – 16:30 Closing cocktail

Scientific Committee
Organizers
Direction: Federico Soriano
General Coordination: Silvia Colmenares

Organizing Committee
Nicolás Maruri
Rafael Pina
Fernando Casqueiro
José Antonio Ruiz Esquiroz
Esperanza Campaña
Gustavo Rojas
Sálvora Feliz
Marcos Cortés
Elena Romero

Scientific Committee
President: Antonio Miranda

Almudena Ribot
Antonio González Capitel
David Archilla
Emilia Hernández Pezzi
Federico Soriano
Fernando Casqueiro
Françoise Fromonot
Horacio Torrent
Javier Frechilla
Joan Ockman
José Pérez de Lama
Juan Miguel Hernández de León
Manuel Gausa
María Teresa Muñoz
Nicolás Maruri
Paloma Gil
Paula V. Álvarez
Rafael Pina
Santiago de Molina

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