Day 3

Book Launch – Fronts: Military Urbanisms and the Developing World
Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller with Chris Taylor and Sofia Krimizi
Fronts: Military Urbanisms and the Developing World uncovers a growing geography of co-dependence between the global security complex and the urban morphologies of the developing world, which it increasingly incriminates. Military training sites provide a lens through which we can better understand the shape of the city to come. Military doctrine has recently and dramatically shifted to view the world’s cities as suspect sites of potential aggression. As the majority of new urban life will manifest in informal development, the world is now more than ever explicitly divided in two camps – those who view the informal city as an opportunity, and those who see it as a threat. This paradigmatic shift has set the stage for impending conflict between security and development interests, which use the informal city as their site.
Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller are a registered architects and a founding partners of AGENCY. Ersela’s ongoing design research seeks to amplify the reach of local practices in informal environments, identifying opportunities for intervention and proposing agile minimal inventions she calls ‘Hackable Infrastructures’. Stephen directs the Dust Institute studio, an architectural interrogation of transnational dust migration and its growing impact on life and the built environment. https://agencyarchitecture.com

Talk on Land Arts of the American West, the adaptation of the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo
Chris Taylor in conversation with Ersela Kripa, Stephen Mueller and Sofia Krimizi
Land Arts 2020 Adaptation – how does a field programme adapt to a pandemic? Science fiction scenarios, of bio-hazard-suited researchers who roam the desert examining the residue of humanity’s engagement with the natural world, do not adequately protect participants from Covid-19 uncertainty. Nor can we shield the vulnerable communities and lands – disadvantaged by systemic economic poverty and limited health infrastructure – that we routinely encounter. Rather than magnify the inherent risks of travel, Land Arts 2020 aims to adapt.
Chris Taylor is the Director of Land Arts of the American West and an Associate Professor of Architecture at Texas Tech University where he has been since 2008. He studied architecture at the University of Florida and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard (GSD).

Metabolic Rift: Episode1
Joshua Harskamp, Sahir Patel, Maximillian Worrell
History of Integrated Design: the talk looks at the cultural and economic forces that have led to a return to what can be described as high-tech sustenance farming.

8 Dry Martini around a 68cm x 63cm x 40cm table
Supervoid, Amunategui-Valdes, GANKO, NM3, PLAN COMUN
Supervoid hosts a conversation between Amunàtegui-Valdès, Ganko, NM3 and Plan Común over drinks.
Supervoid is an architecture office based in Rome. It was established in 2016 by Benjamin Gallegos Gabilondo and Marco Provinciali after they graduated from IUAV. It has realised projects in Italy, Chile and the US at various scales. The office is currently working on the redevelopment of the Tenuta della Mistica in Rome and the renovation of the Punta Spadillo lighthouse in Pantelleria. It participated in the 2014 and 2016 Venice Biennales, and designed the Archizines show in Venice. Supervoid was shortlisted for the 2019 Lisbon Triennale Millennium bcp Début Award and took part in The State of the Art of Architecture exhibition and symposium at the Triennale di Milano in 2020. The office has published projects and essays internationally in magazines and books such as San Rocco, Elements of Venice, The Real Review and Vesper, among others.

QUARANTINE BOOK REVIEW 2
Francesca Dell Algio
Architecture is spontaneous: A review of Gio Ponti's Cento Lettere. The letters that Gio Ponti wrote to this friends will be observed as part of his prolific production and read as a gesture of spontaneous architecture.
Francesca Dell'Aglio is an architect, writer and educator. She currently teaches History and Theory Studies at the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art.

Summer RE-Screen: Hot and Cold
Bjarke Ingels

Summer RE-Screen: AA XX 100: Feminist Theory and Starchitecture
Hilde Heynen & Martha Thorne in conversation, chaired by Doina Petrescu