Flying Panels: How Concrete Panels Changed the World

Housing millions of people, apartment blocks made of prefabricated concrete panels are one of the most common buildings in the world. Flying Panels – How Concrete Panels Changed the World tells of the time when a concrete panel soaring across the sky symbolised the future and embodied dreams of a better world. In the grip of a housing supply crisis, by looking at how a building technology became a powerful tool for the construction of a new society, this lecture will rethink the concrete panel as it was once considered an innovation that heralded a new, rational future for society at a global scale.

This lecture accompanies Flying Panels: How Concrete Panels Changed the World, exhibition curated by Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola at the ArkDes – The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm (18^th October 2019 to 1^st March 2020). 

https://arkdes.se/en/utstallning/flygande-betong-byggelementen-som-forandrade-varlden/?fbclid=IwAR2DLdIsIrn5dAhQ2-XE6GgAslutNFGNDmzZLNg0sbilJWdDNodmp3VY6Ss

Pedro Ignacio Alonso is an architect with an MSc from the Catholic University of Chile and a PhD in architecture from the Architectural Association in London. His 2014 Chile Pavilion exhibition ‘Monolith Controversies’, co-curated with Hugo Palmarola, was awarded a Silver Lion during the 14^th Venice Architecture Biennial. Alonso is associate professor and director of research in the School of Architecture at the Catholic University of Chile, and was Princeton-Mellon Fellow 2015–2016 at Princeton University.

Hugo Palmarola is a designer who graduated from the Catholic University of Chile (2004) and holds a PhD in Latin American Studies from the UNAM (2018). His Chile Pavilion exhibition ‘Monolith Controversies’, co-curated with Pedro Ignacio Alonso, was awarded a Silver Lion during the 14^th Venice Architecture Biennial (2014). Palmarola obtained the Student Essay Prize from the Design History Society (2018). He teaches at the School of Design of the Catholic University of Chile.

Image: Gerbert Rappaport, Cherry Town (Cheryomushki), 1963, Film still, Lenfilm, Soviet Union