city|speculations is a collaboration among scholars working on the intersection of architecture and humanities and engaged in architectural design and visual practice. We are focused on research-led studios, critical pedagogy, the city as a site of cultural production and speculation, architectural design as a mode of critical thinking. We engage with themes such as: curating and architecture, the city, architectural and urban research, field work and disciplinary habits, place and memory, materiality and site specificity, city and visuality, visual and spatial knowledges, urban archiving.

 

Our ambition is to create a repository of critical reflections, documentation of design and visual practice, curated production, and dissemination of research on specific cities and projects. We explore critical pedagogy, rigours of studio practice, practice-theory relations, critical writing and critical making - ‘material thinking’ as well as spatial thinking. We consolidate knowledge exchange through our existing and emerging multidisciplinary collaborative networks and activities.

 

We are committed to rigorous and innovative scholarship: critical writing, theory and criticism, history, design, urban methodologies; within and through the disciplines of Architecture, Art, Cultural Studies, Urban Design. We are committed to the production of innovative and pertinent publications, exhibitions, pedagogy, design projects, book works which actively promote documentation and contribute to dialogues across discourses of contemporary architectural design, critical design practice, visual practice, creative practice.

'towards the stalinist colossus'

 photo: Katy Bentall, Warsaw 2017. from

Ella Chmielewska, Warsaw Afterimages: Of Walls and Memories in Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Mattias Kärrholm (eds)

Urban Walls: Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Structures and Surfaces.

(London and New York: Routledge, 2018): 119-143.

© city|speculations 2020