1.5 ConEd Learning Hours
1.5 AIA LU
10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
The COVID-19 global pandemic led to a radical re-evaluation of the conditions of architectural practice. This lecture discusses the various transformative impacts of the pandemic on the architectural profession, basing its findings on a study with 130 contemporary design practices from different parts of the world. It raises new questions about the intertwined natures of architectural production, science, society, and spatial practice—questions that had lain latent in the profession for years, but which the pandemic brought to the fore. This session offers insights for the discipline in a post-pandemic era.
Learning Objectives
- Learn how architects around the world began rethinking their working routines as a response to COVID restrictions (e.g., new formats of teamwork, communication, brainstorming, documentary exchange, new technologies).
- Understand how the pandemic modified the spatial conventions of everyday life in the city and how it has transformed various building typologies.
- Gain insights on how the risk of pandemics leads us to rethink the social dimension of architecture and urban design.
- Reflect on the agency of architectural design in a post-pandemic world and understand the long-lasting bond between city, science, and society as the “new normal” begins to emerge.
Albena Yaneva is a professor of architectural theory and director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG) at the Manchester Urban Institute. She has been Visiting Professor at Princeton School of Architecture (2013), Parsons School of Design’s The New School (2015), and Politecnico di Turino (2018). Albena held the prestigious Lise Meitner Visiting Chair in Architecture at the University of Lund, Sweden (2017-2019). Her research is intrinsically transdisciplinary and crosses the boundaries of science studies, cognitive anthropology, architectural theory, and political philosophy. She is the author of several books, including The Making of a Building, Mapping Controversies in Architecture, and Architecture After Covid, with work translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Thai, Polish, Turkish, and Japanese. Albena is the recipient of the RIBA President’s award for outstanding university-based research.