For the latest iteration of MIARD TALKS – a lecture series organized by Andrea Bagnato – three guests were invited to present their recent work to first-year students. The goal of this session was to think together about the ways designers and architects can engage with the conditions around them – be they urban, social, or geopolitical.
Rachaporn Choochuey discussed the challenges of metropolitan Thailand, and how such a context allows to imagine new architectures of coexistence. Ivan Lopez Munuera chronicled the early days of clubbing in Manhattan as a form of experimental, non-normative social organization. Moad Musbahi presented his ongoing research on the zawiya of North Africa – a building form that blurs the boundaries between architecture and soil, sacred and secular, past and future.
March 11 / May 11, 2021
Rachaporn Choochuey is the founder of allzone, an architecture studio based in Bangkok. They are a group of happy design professionals who joyfully collaborate with specialists across the borders of their fields and country. They are fascinated by the ever-changing mega metropolis of Bangkok, and their observations are always captured by contemporary vernacular design solutions. Besides built work, they have taken part in the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
> Reading: “Interview: The Art of Living Lightly”
https://assemblepapers.com.au/2020/04/16/rachaporn-choochuey-the-art-of-living-lightly/
Ivan Lopez Munuera is a New York-based scholar, critic, and curator working at the intersection of culture, technology, politics, and bodily practices in the modern period and on the global stage. Since 2015 he has been developing his dissertation at Princeton University on the architecture of HIV/AIDS in New York City. He has curated exhibitions at Museo Reina Sofía, Princeton University (Liquid La Habana, 2018), and CA2M. Recently, his project Your Restroom is a Battleground was featured in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.
> Reading: “Lands of Contagion”
https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/363717/lands-of-contagion/
Moad Musbahi was part of the curatorial team of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019. His research investigates migration as a method for cultural production and political expression. He curated In Pursuit of Images (Architectural Association, 2020) and has shown his work at Jameel Art Center and Beirut Art Center. He worked in Libya for the UNHCR and Red Crescent, and was recently in residency at Gasworks, London.
> Read: “Sounding Calamity”
https://infrasonica.org/en/audiblematter/soundingcalamity