Spatial Infrastructure

After The Building, José Aragüez's second book revolves around a new concept in architecture, spatial infrastructure, that operates both as a design tool capable of projecting architectural thinking forward, and as an analytical category that shifts our understanding of the history of the field and contemporary production.

Taken together, the collection of essays presented by Aragüez investigates some of the most intractable issues pertaining to architectural discourse, while also examining scientific, critical, and cultural dimensions where relevant. Key subjects include a building’s discursive building, engineering patents and spatial disposition in architecture, typological invention and sponge surfaces, “the organic” at the intersection of architecture and philosophy, imageability in the context of an evolving market economy, language vis-à-vis self-determinacy in creative practices, a building’s spatial kernel, and the possibility of architectural metacriticality.

Speakers include:

José Aragüez is a licensed practicing architect, writer, and educator based in Paris. He teaches at Yale University, having previously led graduate studios and seminars at Columbia GSAPP from 2013–20, and having held the 2020–21 H. Deane Pearce Endowed Chair at Texas Tech. Aragüez has lectured extensively across Europe and North America in addition to the Middle East and Japan. Besides Columbia and Texas Tech, he has taught at Cornell, Princeton, Penn, Rice University in Paris, and the University of Granada. His recent five-year project, involving the publication of The Building (2016, Lars Müller Pub.), is widely regarded in international circles as one of the most significant contributions to architectural discourse in the 2010s. Aragüez is the founding principal of José Aragüez Architects, a practice for architecture, urbanism, and the production of discourse. In the past, he worked as an architect for Antonio J. Torrecillas (Spain), MVRDV (Rotterdam), and Idom/ACXT (London).

Anna Font is currently completing her PhD at the Architectural Association (London). She has been visiting professor at the Escuela de Arquitectura y Estudios Urbanos of Universidad Torcuato Di Tella UTDT EAEU (Buenos Aires) from 2011 to 2021, where she taught Design Studios and Research Seminars, while coordinating and being a tutor of Undergraduate Design Thesis. Parallel to her teaching activities she founded and coordinated the EAEU Archive of Architecture from 2012 to 2021, that registered, compiled, and edited content from the extracurricular activities at the School, producing the series of publications Archivos de Arquitectura, up to its twelfth issue. Anna currently teaches Environmental and Technical Studies (ETS) at the Architectural Association (London), is Studio Tutor at the University of Sheffield, and AcrossRCA Unit Tutor at the Royal College of Art (London). She co-leads with Ciro Najle the Digital Logic module at the Master in Integrated Architectural Design at ETSALS (Barcelona).

James Khamsi designs across a range of scales – from urban masterplans to furniture pieces – and has delivered projects in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Europe. Prior to founding DCSK, James was the founding principal of the New York-city based FIRM. He has practiced with leading architects, most notably at Foreign Office Architects, where he worked on the London 2012 Olympic Park Masterplan, the Sevenstone mixed-use development in Sheffield and the Virtual Metro for the RATP in Paris. He is currently a Unit Master of Intermediate 17 at the Architectural Association (London).

Sophia Psarra is a Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, where she directs the Architectural and Urban History and Theory PhD programme. Before her appointment at UCL, she was Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University. Her research is transdisciplinary, spanning architecture and urbanism, spatial morphology, history/theory, cultural studies. She has produced funded research of international significance and made outstanding contributions to education. Her work is disseminated through two monographs (The Venice Variations: Tracing the Architectural Imagination, UCLPress 2018; Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning, Routledge 2009/translated in Korean); one edited volume (The Production Sites of Architecture, Routledge 2019); 40 research papers; three co-edited volumes of research/educational work, and 30 invited international lectures.

Jessica Reynolds founded vPPR with Tatiana von Preussen and Catherine Pease in 2009 and has led teams focusing on cultural projects including Artist Housing in East London, the Qingdao Cultural Centre in China and exhibition designs such as at David Chipperfield’s The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK. She has also led a variety of other projects including Novosibirsk Airport interior design in Russia, several infill housing projects across London and a dance centre in Wales. She is a unit master for Experimental 13 at The Architectural Association in London. She often works as a visiting critic in both the UK and the US and lectures nationally and internationally about the work of vPPR. She was an editor of Pidgin, the Princeton University School of Architecture Journal, and writes for architecture journals in London. She worked previously for Front, in New York, where she became interested in how big concepts are translated into small details.