IAAC Lecture Series – Izaskun Chinchilla
Title: How to transform our cities and buildings into caring environments
Date: Thursday, November 25th 2021
Time: 19:30 CET
Location: IAAC – Pujades 102, Poble Nou, Barcelona
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Lecture Abstract
After decades of industrialization, our cities, in their physical and legislative dimensions, are productivity-oriented places. In them, you can distribute merchandise, advertise a commercial product or drive to go to work. But they are also a more hostile environment for non-productive activities: being able to choose where to sit and rest, use a public bathroom, drink clean water without paying, breathe unpolluted air, have fun without consuming or walk without getting wet when it rains are great challenges in today’s cities. The privilege that productive activities have enjoyed and those who exercise them has led to the denial of the diverse biological and subjective characteristics of its inhabitants and the multidimensional character of the city, becoming a cultural principle and a political practice.
This observation throws a great responsibility on those who design and govern the city: their decisions and their management distribute opportunities unequally among its inhabitants. But it also opens up a vast field of alternatives that can present an integrative vision of the economy, the environment, and the health of a diverse citizenry. This lecture will invite us to think and rethink architectural and urban models, prioritizing not so much the technical, formal and abstract knowledge of its professionals as the public and civic dimension of their activity.
About Izaskun Chinchilla
Dr. Izaskun Chinchilla. Phd Architect from Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain). International Fellow RIBA. She is driving her own office since 2001 in Madrid. She has a long and deep experience in research, education and public engagement. She is Professor of Architectural Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College of London. She has also teached at Hong Kong University, Ecole Special (Paris), HEAD University (Geneva), University of Alicante (Escuela de Arquitectura Universidad de Alicante), Madrid University (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), CEU San Pablo University (Madrid) and IE (Segovia). Her designer activity is accompanied by a research project called “The Structure of the Ecological Revolution in Architecture” that has taken her as visitting scholar to Columbia University in New York, Ecole de Mines de Paris and Princeton University in New Jersey and also to the Institut d ´Arquitectura Avancada de Catalunya (Barcelona), in a Postgraduate Master. In 2012 she was awarded with a Public Engagement fellowship from University College of London.