STUDY NIGHT / LECTURES 15 January 2020 – 6 pm > 9:30 pm – The New Sanctuary: Perspectives on Architecture as Safe Haven

This event, organised by the curator of the exhibition Laura Herman, invites a series of scholars, artists and critics to discuss what constitutes a space of sanctuary in our current times.

While historically sanctuary spaces offered refuge or safety from pursuit, persecution, or forced marriages, our understanding of sanctuaries has expanded to sites of comfort and quiet. Yet do these places of rest and wellbeing really exist? And what has become of sacred architecture as the manifestation of the political? Can architecture still provide refuge when it seems to increasingly have become the human’s antagonist?

The programme claims architecture as a political practice and presents interventions by a number of international guests who will critically approach the theme of ‘The New Sanctuary’ from their various perspectives and backgrounds.

Imagined as a series of declarations, the programme will reflect the necessity to understand how architecture – as the materialisation of social, political and economic political relations – affects the way we feel safe, heard and cared for.

With:

• Francine Fort, arc en rêve  centre d’architecture, Bordeaux
• Sandi Hilal, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR), Beit Sahour
• Octave Perrault, Cruising Pavilion, Paris
• Axel Timm, raumlabor, Berlin

Programme

18h00 : Laura Herman (Introduction)
18h15 : Octave Perrault, Spaces of Enlightenment: Abstract Reality & Physical Utopia
18h50 : Questions
19h00 : Sandi Hilal, Permanent Temporariness
19h35 : Questions
19h45 : Pause
20h00 : Axel Timm, The Floating University Berlin Project (2018/2019)
20h35 : Questions
20h45 : Francine Fort, arc en rêve centre d’architecture
21h20 : Questions

Biographies

Francine Fort, arc en rêve  centre d’architecture
In 1981 Francine Fort and the architect Michel Jacques founded arc en rêve, which opened its doors at l’Entrepôt Lainé in the same year. Francine Fort has been the director of arc en rêve since it was founded. From 1990 to 1995 she was architectural and urban planning quality adviser to Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the mayor of Bordeaux. From 1992 to 1995 she was permanent secretary of the Deux Rives Project headed by Serge Goldberg, chief planning officer at Bordeaux City Council. In addition to her responsibilities as director, she has been directly involved in projects such as the curating of Bordeaux port de la Lune – architecture 89, an international call for ideas on the future of the banks of the Garonne (1989); designing and coordinating the experimental initiative Nouvelles formes d’habitat individuel à Bordeaux et à Floirac (2004); the curating of the themed exhibition MUTATIONS, a major show in 2000 devoted to the contemporary urban condition with Rem Koolhaas as director of theory, Michel Jacques as artistic director and Jean Nouvel as exhibition designer, and in 2016 constellation.s, a 2,500-square-metre exhibition on ways of living in the world in a time of ecological crisis and the digital revolution. ; she has also organised symposia as recently Partager l’architecture, avec les enfants (24 and 25 November 2017).

Laura Herman
Laura Herman (born 1988, Brussels) graduated from the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard, 2016) in New York, and holds a master’s degree in Comparative Modern Literature (Ghent University, 2010). Since 2016, Laura Herman has served as a curator at La Loge, a space in Brussels dedicated to contemporary art, architecture and theory. She is an editor at De Witte Raaf, a bimonthly art journal distributed in Belgium and the Netherlands. Her reviews and essays have appeared in Mousse, Frieze, Spike Art Quarterly, Metropolis M and elsewhere, and she has curated exhibitions and events including Wild Horses & Trojan Dreams at Marres, Maastricht; Definition Series: Infrastructure, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; Third Nature, Hessel Museum, New York, and Natural Capital (Modal Alam), BOZAR, Brussels. She is currently developing an exhibition exploring family as the legal basis of citizenship, property and the state, which will open at Extra City Kunsthal in 2019.

Sandi Hilal, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR)
Sandi Hilal is an architect, artist and educator, she is currently developing an ongoing artistic research project centered around the concept of Hospitality manifested through the project Al-Madhafah: The living room and the right to be a host. She is a founding member and Director of DAAR – Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, an architectural collective that combines conceptual speculations, spatial pragmatic interventions, discourse and collective learning. Hilal is among the founders of Campus in Camps, an experimental educational program established in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem.
She headed the infrastructure and Camp Improvement Program in the West Bank at United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from 2008 to 2014. Earlier this year Sandi Hilal published her book Permanent Temporariness together with Alessandro Petti. In the book they describe how cultural heritage and hospitality can be used for breaking up barriers between private and public life.

Octave Perrault, Cruising Pavilion
Octave Perrault (1988, St-Malo) is an architect. He is a founding member of art collective åyr (2014-18) that explored domesticity after the internet through exhibitions and publications with institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum, the Museum Ludwig, the Berlin Biennale, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the MAK Center-Schindler House. He is a member of the curatorial project Cruising Pavilion that produces exhibitions on Gay sex, Architecture and Cruising Cultures, most recently at ArkDes in Stockholm. His writings have been published in Perspecta, Harvard Design Magazine and E-Flux amongst others. He currently works at Dominique Perrault Architecture in Paris.

Axel Timm, raumlaborberlin
Axel Timm born in Hannover in 1973, he studied Architecture in Berlin (TU Berlin), where he graduated in 2004. 2003–2005; member of the board of Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben e.V. Since 2005 he has been head of Autotrans Ltd., society for artistic production and studio administration. 2010/11 guest professor at the FH Dortmund; in practicing partnership with Francesco Apuzzo since 2004; member of raumlaborberlin since 2005.
Raumlaborberlin is a Berlin based network-collective of 9 architects, founded in 1999. raumlaborberlin works at the intersection of architecture, city planning, art and urban intervention : “In our work we address city and urban renewal as a process. We are attracted to difficult urban locations. Places torn between different systems, time periods or planning ideologies, that can not adapt. Places that are abandoned, left over or in transition that contains some relevance for the processes of urban transformations.”