Architecture and Progress

A day of conversations interrogating various dimensions of architecture’s progress as contributions to global civilisational advancement including philosophy, architectural history and theory, research and education, architectural design, style and urban politics.

Patrik Schumacher's theoretical, educational, and architectural oeuvre will serve as a focal point of reference for these conversations. Each themed session is an opportunity for invited participants to probe and critique Schumacher's positions within the respective dimension, as well as offer their alternative opinions on architecture and progress.

Petar Bojanic, host of Architecture and Progress

Register to attend here.

SCHEDULE

10am - Welcome, Ingrid Schroder

10.10am - Introduction, Petar Bojanic

10.20am Conversations on Philosophy
10.20am Patrik Schumacher
10.30am Christian Morgner
10.40am Alexander Bard
10.50am Mark Pennington
11.00am Conversations

11.30am Conversations on Architectural Theory
11.30am Patrik Schumacher
11.40am Ingrid Schroder
11.50am Brian Hatton
12.00pm Conversation

12.30pm Conversations on Research and Education
12.30pm Patrik Schumacher
12.40pm Theodore Spyropoulos
12.50pm Tyson Hosmer
1pm Conversations

1.30pm Lunch Break

2.30pm Conversations on Architectural Design
2.30pm Patrik Schumacher
2.40pm Shajay Bhooshan
2.50pm Melike Altınışık
3pm Conversations

3.30pm Conversations on Style
3.30pm Patrik Schumacher
3.40pm Gilles Retsin
3.50pm Anna Font Vacas
4pm Conversations

4.30pm Conversations on Urban Politics
4.30pm Patrik Schumacher
4.40pm Austin Williams
4.50pm Shiv Malik
5pm Enriqueta Llabres Valls
5.10pm Conversations

5.30pm Panel Discussion

6pm Drinks reception

Speakers

Melike Altinisik is an architect and designer dedicated to advancing innovative, future-oriented projects across architecture, urbanism, and design.She earned her Master’s degree from the AADRL in 2006 and worked at Zaha Hadid Architects from 2006–2013. In 2013, She founded MAA – Melike Altınışık Architects and leads the international practice which has offices based in Istanbul, Turkey, and Seoul, South Korea. MAA’s work is internationally acclaimed for its technology-driven vision, including the futuristic 369-meter supertall Çamlıca Tower in Istanbul, recipient of the CTBUH 2022 “Best Tall Non-Building” Award, and the pioneering, award-winning Seoul Robot and AI Museum in Seoul, S.Korea. In 2024, Melike was recognised by RIBA between ‘’100 Women: Architects in Practice’’.

Alexander Bard is a Swedish philosopher, artist, music producer, tech entrepreneur, international lecturer, and co-author of six books with Jan Söderqvist: The Netocrats (2000), The Global Empire (2003), The Body Machines (2009), Syntheism - Creating God In The Internet Age (2014), Digital Libido - Sex, Power and Violence In The Network Society (2018), and Process and Event (2022). Bard’s work focuses on the historically new relationship between human existence and a world drenched in intelligent and overpowering technologies. As a philosopher-activist, he is devoted to a series of libertarian, utopian and spiritual projects across the world. His music projects from the 1990s and onward have sold millions of records and today gather millions of streams, and his proudly outspoken X account has over 140,000 followers.

Shajay Bhooshan is an Associate Director at Zaha Hadid Architects where he co-founded and heads the Computation and Design research group (ZHACODE, 2007). He is an alumnus of, and a studio-master at, the postgraduate course of the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association, London (AADRL, 2006). There he explores the application of computational design and gaming technologies to industrialized urban development. Shajay pursued his scientific interests in Architectural Geometry and robotic fabrication during his Doctoral studies at the Block Research Group (BRG, 2022) of ETH Zurich and previously as an M.Phil. graduate from the University of Bath (2016).

Petar Bojanić is Professor of Philosophy. His main areas of research include political philosophy — particularly the theory of institutions and collective action — as well as violence and the ethics of war, Jewish political tradition, and the philosophy of architecture. He also works on the concept of the project and projective acts. He is co-editor of Peter Eisenman: In Dialogue with Architects and Philosophers and of the journal Khōrein.

Anna Font Vacas is an architect, PhD in Design from the AA (London), she graduated from ETSALS (Barcelona) and Harvard GSD (Cambridge, MA). Currently, she is Head of Learning at the AA, StudioMaster at the Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech)graduate programme, and Environmental Technical Studies Course Tutor. Prior to the AA she was visiting professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Buenos Aires). Her work combines academic, editorial and design projects.

Brian Hatton has contributed at the AA since 1983. A writer on art and architecture, guest editor for Architectural Review, Milan Triennale curator, he wrote the introduction to Zaha Hadid’s 2000 ICA exhibition, and the citation for the Kiesler Foundation prize to Cedric Price. A critic rather than theorist, for a 2015 conference ‘This Thing Called Theory’, he titled his paper ‘This Thing Called Crit’. As a Canadian Centre for Architecture Senior Mellon Fellow, he traced the origins of the elusive subject implied in utopian ideas of ‘open plan’ to the sublime phenomenology of wandering. Tracing and wandering continue.

Tyson Hosmer is an architect, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of architectural design, computation, AI, and robotics. He is a Senior Associate Researcher at Zaha Hadid Architects, where he leads the ZHA-Social research group focused on cognitive agent-based simulation, machine-learning-driven generative design, and new forms of immersive social interaction. He is also an Associate Professor and Programme Director of the MArch Architectural Design (AD) programme at The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, where his research investigates autonomous, reconfigurable building systems using distributed robotics, multi-agent reinforcement learning, and AI-assisted design models. His work has been published and awarded internationally, including at NeurIPS, ACADIA, the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), Architectural Design (AD), and A+U.

Enriqueta Llabres Valls is an architect co-leading, Llabres-Tabony Architects, an international practice with projects across Europe, the Middle East, and China. Graduated in architecture in Barcelona, she brings over 20 years of professional experience, including numerous competition-winning and award-winning projects. Her work bridges architecture, landscape, and territory, informed by her academic background and her postgraduate studies in Local Economic Development at the London School of Economics. Her research integrates economic geography, urban and global dynamics, and environmental systems, positioning design as a form of innovation. Since 2012, she has been part of the leadership of Research Cluster 18, investigating planetary urbanization, digital design technologies, AI, and the metaverse in architecture and urbanism.

Shiv Malik is an author, broadcaster, technologist and former investigative journalist, whom along with reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan, worked for the Guardian for six years breaking exclusive front-page stories on everything from housing to economics, social policy and international terrorism. He is the author of two books including the 2010 cult economics book, Jilted Generation, and is a co-founder of the think-tank, the Intergenerational Foundation. In the last five years he has been an entrepreneur in personal data markets and audio AI, and in late 2025 he co-founded the Forest City project to help build Britain’s first city in 50 years.

Christian Morgner is Professor of Digital Culture and Social Innovation at the University of Portsmouth. He serves as Research Lead for the Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR), providing strategic leadership in immersive and extended reality research. Grounded in process methodology and second-order systems theory, Christian’s work advances relational, sensory-driven frameworks across healthcare, XR, AI, equity, and education. Over two decades, he have collaborated internationally across academia, industry, government, and the cultural and health sectors, translating systems-theoretical insight into innovative, socially impactful practice.

Mark Pennington is Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, University of London where he directs the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society. He worked previously at Queen Mary, University of London, and at the London School of Economics from whence he holds a PhD. Mark is the author of three books – Planning and the Political Market: Public Choice and the Politics of Government Failure (Athlone/ Continuum 2001); Robust Political Economy: Classical Liberalism and the Future of Public Policy (Edward Elgar, 2011) and Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Gilles Retsin is an architect and Co-Founder of Automated Architecture (AUAR), where he is building a global network of robotic micro-factories to produce housing at scale. An architect and technologist, his work sits at the intersection of architecture, AI, and automation — reimagining construction as a distributed, intelligent industry. His projects have been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), the Royal Academy, Centre Pompidou, and Vitra Design Museum, and he has lectured at MIT, Stanford, and ETH Zurich. Gilles is Associate Professor at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture and holds a PhD from RMIT University.

Patrik Schumacher is principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and was seminal in developing Zaha Hadid Architects into a 500-strong global architecture and design brand. In 1996, he founded the Design Research Laboratory (DRL) at the Architectural Association in London, where he continues to teach. In 1999, he received his PhD from the Institute of Cultural Science, Klagenfurt University. Since 2007, he has published a series of manifestos promoting Parametricism as the new epochal style for the 21st century. In 2023, he published his book-length treatise Tectonism – Architecture for the 21st Century. The translation of his PhD thesis, The Invention of Modern Design in the Age of Monopoly Capitalism is being published in early 2026.

Theodore Spyropoulos is the Director of the Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab (AADRL) in London and is a resident artist at Somerset House. He previously chaired the AA Graduate School, was a Professor of Architecture at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt and a visiting Research Fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He co-founded the experimental art, architecture, and design practice Minimaforms with Stephen Spyropoulos and has previously worked for the offices of Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid. In 2013, the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture awarded him the ACADIA Award of Excellence for his educational work directing the AADRL. He has been published internationally and is the author of Adaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living (2013), Enabling (2010), and the forthcoming publications Quantum (2025) and Elemental: Phenomena as Technology (2026).

Austin Williams leads the PG Dip Professional Practice in Architecture at Kingston School of Art, and is a Visiting Scholar, XJTLU University, Suzhou, China (where he lived from 2011-2017). For 20 years, he’s been the director of the Future Cities Project, as well as Technical Editor of The Architects’ Journal, and China correspondent for The Architectural Review. He is the author of "China's Urban Revolution " and “New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future”. Williams founded the mantownhuman manifesto (featured in Penguin Classics’ “100 Artists Manifestos”) and has spoken at a range of conferences from New York to Ningbo; from Hawaii to Hong Kong. He is a regular media commentator on development, environmental critique and China, and currently hosts the Professional Practice Podcasts.

Find out more about the Design Research Laboratory (DRL) and studying at the Architectural Association here.

Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these. If you are unable to attend physically but would like to participate in the event remotely please email publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk