Swimming Pool Stories Symposium

A swimming pool is typically an occasion in a story but rarely its heroine. This is unsurprising because on the surface, it is a simple object. However, its shadowy depths reveal a powerful space of imagination where spatial, socio-political, physiological and psychological constructs are framed.

Through a series of short essays, each of which is coupled with a single image, we are going to compose an incomplete mosaic that reasserts the protean quality of the space and its relevance in contemporary society, including and equally importantly, as a space of exchange, dialogue and narration that is underlined in the format of the event.

Naina Gupta is an architect. She has a PhD from the Architectural Association, School of Architecture that focuses on social reform, internationalism, and modern architecture. Her research on swimming stems from her dissertation. She teaches in the UK including at the AA and has taught and practiced internationally. She swims regularly and believes that many of her ideas take shape on the black line. This symposium is an episode in a larger series that includes teaching, writing, and field work.

Schedule:

11.00 Introduction. Naina Gupta

11.10 Panel 1. Play. Anna Font, Monzie Tan, Dariya Cheremisina

12.00 Panel 2. Performative. Davide Deriu, Nerma Cridge

12.40 Panel 3. Immersion. Chris Doray, Doreen Bernath

13.20 Break

14.00 Panel 4. Afterlife. Agnes Tatzber, David Ward, TOMOCO [Chiara Toscani with Paola Mongiu and Juarez Corso]

15.00 Panel 5. On the Edge. Sé (they/them), Aiden Domican

15.40 Panel 6. Natural/Artificial. Chiara Toscani & Claudia Nitsche, Mads Bjørn Christiansen, Chris Romer-Lee

16.30 Coffee Break

16.50 Panel 7. Strokes of Change. Aleca Haeger, Beatriz Marco, Qian Yang, Rotem Lewinsohn, Zixi (Alina) Li.

17.30 Round Table

18.00 Drinks

Biographies of Speakers (alphabetically)

Agnes Tatzber (b. 1993, A) works as an interior designer and lecturer as well as independently as cultural worker. The focus revolves around collective creation, the exchange of experience and the co-production of habitats. She is co-founder of the cultural association Kollektiv Kaorle in Vienna (2020), the community garden project Alsergarten (2019) and the Blechsonne music festival in Germany (2022). She holds a BA from New Design University (A), and a Master from the Piet Zwart Institute (NL), where her research focused on the interrelationships of spatial decisions and sociological consequences bound to extractive economies.

Aiden Domican is a designer based in London. Originally from Australia, he is currently completing his final year in the MArch course at the Architectural Association.

Aleca Haeger is a 5th year diploma student. She is British Singaporean, and an ex-national figure skater of Malaysia. She loves filmmaking as a medium and believes that film has great potential in becoming an alternative consultation tool in design and urban planning.

Alexander Teddy has travelled and worked in various parts of Eastern Europe, visited more than one abandoned swimming pool, and bathed in many other remote spots. A career specialist in advising on risk, he generally knows how to spot one – though does not always keep away. Neither a writer nor a photographer himself, Alexander has a great appreciation of both arts – as well as of architecture. His taste in the latter is very eclectic, despite hailing from England’s capital of gothic: Oxford. But, in all his travels to date, he is yet to take a dip in a gothic swimming pool.

Anna Font is an architect, 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), where she taught Thesis, Design Studios, and Research Seminars. Parallel to her teaching activities she founded and coordinated the EAEU Archive of Architecture, producing the series of publications Archivos de Arquitectura, up to its twelfth issue. Her publications include essays and projects in architecture magazines, and she has collaborated in the edition and production of the books Suprarural (Actar, 2017) and The Generic Sublime (Harvard GSD/Actar, 2016). Anna runs her own practice after having worked in architectural offices in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Boston, and Tokyo. She 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).

Beatriz Marco is a 4th year Diploma 12 Student at the Architectural Association. She is interested in designing experimental performative spaces and collaborating with interdisciplinary experts and the community, to create a participatory work practice. During her year out, she worked in Ensamble Studio, Madrid, and Plastique Fantastique, Berlin.

Chris Doray Born and raised in Singapore, Chris Doray completed his Graduate School at the Bartlett and more recently completed the Post-Graduate Programme in History and Critical Thinking at the AA. After three decades of leadership roles in international practices, Chris returns to theory and has served as an Adjunct Professor in UBC and led design studios in the UK and EU. Postpandemic, he launched a Post-Secondary Learning Hub, NEST to nurture the next generation of creatives. He speculates a new form of human conditioning; something more entropic to become the order of the day in cultivating the knowledge and skillsets for what was once the noblest of all creative disciplines.

Chris Romer-Lee is co-founder of architects Studio Octopi and the self-initiated campaign for London’s first floating lido since 1875, Thames Baths. Chris leads on the practice’s work in improving access to water, from natural and manmade waterways in cities to the restoration of historic outdoor pools across the UK and Ireland. The practice is currently working in Australia with Sydney Water on their Urban Plunge programme to establish new swim sites across the city. Chris’s first book will be published by Batsford in 2023. ‘Sea Pools’ will feature 65 of the world’s finest tidal pools.

Claudia Nitsche is an architect, educator, and researcher currently based in London. Since 2020 she has been doing her Ph.D. in History and Critical Thinking in Architecture, entitled "The German Forest as a Contested Territory. The Idea of Wooden Form" under the supervision of Marina Lathouri (director of studies) and Hamed Khosravi (second supervisor) at the AA School of Architecture in London. As an architect, she has worked for various architecture firms in Germany and Switzerland. As an educator she has been teaching architectural history and theory at several institutions since 2015, after graduating from Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design with distinction.

Chiara Toscani is an architect, educator and researcher based in London. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the AA School, in History and Critical Thinking in Architecture, developing a thesis entitled Cities after Nature: On the contemporary notion of Nature and its effect on the city. After graduating in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano (2002), she got her first Ph.D. in Architectural and Urban Design (2008) and awarded a postgraduate fellowship in 2010. From 2008 to 2018, she has been teaching Urban and architectural design at Politecnico of Milano. She has authored a few essays and books. Parallel to her academic path, she worked as a senior architect at Cino Zucchi Architetti for over a decade.

Dariya Cheremisina is interested in expanding the boundaries of the architectural profession by redefining the field as a prosperous common ground of various disciplines. She is a founder of a group in adventurous motion - Hiking Architecture. Dariya is a Diploma student at the AA, approaching architecture through filmmaking, interviewing and behavioral experiments along with traditional practice. She worked as a producer of public program at Strelka institute in 2021 and was recently nominated for Denis Sharp Writing Prize. She was a part of visiting schools: «Art as a labour» in Nikola-Lenivets, «Prato Play», «Casting Castaways» in Asinara and «Possibility of an island» in Chianti.

David Ward is an artist working in a range of media including installations with light and with sound; performance and collaborations with other artists, choreographers, architects and writers; and he has made temporary and permanent works in the public realm. He was an Artist in Residence at King’s College, Cambridge; Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and has been a Visiting Artist at Harvard. He has also taught extensively from the 1980’s to the 2000’s including Goldsmith’s College from 1988 - 1995 and at the Architectural Association between 1999 and 2005.Website: davidward-artist.co.uk

Davide Deriu is a Reader in Architectural History and Theory at the University of Westminster. His research explores critical intersections between spatial and visual cultures, and has been funded by the AHRC, the British Academy, Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Davide’s writing appears in a number of books as well as journals such as Architectural Theory Review, The Journal of Architecture, and Emotion, Space and Society. As part of the Vertigo in the City project, in 2021 he curated the exhibition Falling Away at Ambika P3. His new book, On Balance (2023), is published by Lund Humphries.

Doreen Bernath is an architect and a theorist trained at the University of Cambridge and the Architectural Association. She is currently Executive Editor of The Journal of Architecture, trustee of the Society of Architectural Historian Great Britain, and a co-founder of research collectives ThisThingCalledTheory and Translocality. In parallel to teaching widely at different institutions, she teaches at the AA across PhD, postgraduate programmes, History & Theory Studies, and the Writing Centre, and her publications have appeared internationally. She was a founding-director of the interdisciplinary platform DEZACT and AAVS Uncommon Walks ‘Pedestric Radicals’, as well as co-leader of MArch research and design studio Cinematic Commons at Leeds School of Architecture.

Juarez Corso founded MAR office. He has received his Master in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano in 2003 and has studied for one year at the UTecnica in Lisbon. Since then, he has collaborated with the Politecnico in several courses and research projects, he has been adjunct professor. He has lived in China and worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Beijing where he was involved in the Interlace project in Singapore and in the several. Prior to OMA he has worked with Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo, OdA associati, Cino Zucchi & Partners, Stefano Boeri, winning different International Competitions. Juarez is also engaged in independent photography projects.

Mads Bjørn Christiansen is an independent architect engaged globally within the realms of virtual and built environments. He received a diploma from the Architectural Association in 2018.Current works include a series of building projects under construction in and around Mexico City in collaboration with Isidoro Michan-Guindi and his studio.He co-founded Apophenia, an undisciplined and interdisciplinary entity that explores dreams of wild cultivation and beyond human relationships at the intersection of the arts, microbiology and food production.

Monzie Tan is an avid swimmer and a qualified lifesaver with The Royal Life Saving Society Commonwealth. She has been on and off duty as a lifeguard since 2016, overseeing small pools to large swimming complexes. For her, a good day on duty is when she does not have to enter the water. Currently, Monzie is a Part I Architectural Assistant, having graduated from the Architectural Association in 2022.

Nerma Cridge is a London-based academic and practitioner. She currently teaches at the AA in the Design Research Laboratory and History and Theory Studies and directs small practice - Drawing Agency. Her first monograph - Drawing the Unbuildable – based on her PhD thesis (2012) at the AA on the Soviet avant-garde was published in 2015. Recent publications include "Printing the Familiar" in Re:Print (2018), “Restless: Drawn by Zaha Hadid” in The Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture (2021), and "Extreme Interiority" in Remote Practices: Architecture in Proximity (2022). At present Nerma is working on two books: The Politics of Abstraction, on former Yugoslavia, and Architecture of the Extreme Environments.

Paola Mongiu founded MAR - Multiple Architecture and Research in 2010, a multidisciplinary office based in Milan. She studied Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and Faup in Porto. She received her MArch cum laude at Politecnico in 2003. Since then, she has been collaborating with Dastu-Department of Architecture and Urbanism at PoliMi teaching at the Design Studios as Professor Assistant. Paola worked at OMA Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Beijing, she was Project architect of the MahaNhakon Tower in Bangkok and the MahaNhakon Pavilion. She has also collaborated with Riba Awarded Arch. Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo and CT Architetti. During her collaboration with CT she followed the Tenaris construction site in Qingdao, PRC.

Qian Yang is a fifth-year student at the AA who likes fiction, mythology, machine, and flesh.

Rotem Lewinsohn is an architectural designer based in London. She is currently completing her final year in the MArch Diploma programme at the Architectural Association. Originally started out as a fashion designer, her work aims to explore design as an aesthetic and holistic experience across different scales and disciplines.

Sé (they/them) is a writer and researcher currently completing a PhD on activist spatial practices as queer placemaking in London at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. The project critically engages with elements of placemaking, feminist and queer studies, whilst incorporating ethical reflections on the politics of knowledge production. In focusing on the personal, embodied experiences of LGBTQ activists, this thesis contributes to the public and academic discourses of placemaking.Their creative writing explores queer embodiment and the urban and natural environment. Living in Margate, they can often be found along the shore or dipping into the sea.

Zixi (Alina) Li comes from China and has six years of architectural study and practice experience. She enjoys researching in the field of policy, theory, and model making. With her addiction to lattes and croissants, she enjoys all informal academic chats in cafés. However, apart from the academic aspect, she is a game girl and a huge fan of animations. Without those electronic devices, she is a ticket collector, traveling is integral to her life.

Image © Alexander Teddy. Pripyat, Chernobyl.