[ What can urban utopias do for us? ]

This first talk of ourTemps d'Archi #11 Utopies will explore the history and current state of utopias, looking at the ways in which they have helped to invent new ways of living over the last few centuries. Imaginary constructions, architectural fabulations and urban speculations, as well as their contemporary legacies and uses, will be explored in order to grasp the ways in which utopias can participate in the emancipation and renewal of ways of living.

Guest speakers:
 

• Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou

Trained as an architect and architectural historian, Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou works as a freelance writer and exhibition curator. Her research and projects focus on the frictions between architecture, art and computation and their political and aesthetic implications. Her projects develop at the crossroads between the artistic and academic worlds and manifest themselves in the form of exhibitions, texts, workshops, conferences and performances. In 2020, Emmanuelle curated Supestudio Migrazioni at CIVA and edited the book of the same name.

• Léone Drapeaud (Traumnovelle)

Traumnovelle is an activist faction founded by three Belgian architects: Léone Drapeaud, Manuel León Fanjul and Johnny Leya, using architecture and fiction as analytical, critical and subversive tools to dissect major contemporary issues. Traumnovelle made a name for themselves in the world of architecture for their curatorship of the Belgian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, and in the cultural sector for their set designs at the Horst Festival. They are guided by stories, still believe in a ‘eurotopia’ and have faith in the strength that lies in the will to try, without always succeeding.

• Wouter Van Acker

Wouter Van Acker is engineer-architect and associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) where he co-directs hortence, ULB’s research centre for architectural history, theory and criticism. Before he was Lecturer at Griffith University and doctoral and postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University. He was Review Editor (post-1800) of the EAHN journal Architectural Histories, and is currently editor of journal Clara. In his doctoral thesis, he studied the architectural analogies of knowledge in the work of Paul Otlet (1868-1944), Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) and Otto Neurath (1882-1945). His research focuses on the intellectual history of modern and postmodern architecture.