• Conférence
  • Partenariat
21.11.23 18h30

Reparation Architecture (on the earth politics of soil and planet)

Lecture by Paulo Tavares (architect, author, educator and co-curator of the Brazilian Pavilion, awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023)
@ luca - Luxembourg Center for Architecture
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© Specht Studio, 2023
In this talk, Paulo Tavares will explore recent architectural and curatorial projects to speculate on the potential concept of Reparation Architecture. Architecture that seeks to redress structural injustices is generally labelled “social architecture.” Arguably the invention of this concept of the social, within which architectural knowledge has been instrumental, is the product of modern-colonial frameworks defined along class-based and racialized categories that objectify subalternized communities as sites of study and intervention – the “underdeveloped,” the “backward,” the “uncivilized,” the “primitive.”

Dwelling on the concept of repair may open new visions for spatial practices outside the managerial, disciplinary, positivist frame that still hunts architecture, a field of knowledge-practice historically grounded on the ideology that it is inherently good, working for beautification, betterment, improvement, civilization, progress, development. Towards a concept of reparation architecture can enable spatial practices to be conceived as redressing and redrawing social, historic and political bounds beyond charity, help, state patronage and humanitarianism. Within the frame of repair, architecture does not offer “solutions” to “social problems, ” it draws alliances with social struggles.

From this conceptual framework, the talk focuses on a set of spatial-visual projects that address questions of the politics of the soil, the earth and nature, drawing the historic and political contours of new legal and political frames standing on behalf of non-human rights. 

  • Guest lecturer : Paulo Tavares (speaker online)
  • Venue : luca – Luxembourg Center for Architecture
  • Language : English
  • The lecture will be streamed online via the following link.
  • Priority for the Question & Answer session is given to participants attending in person at luca.

This lecture is part of the lecture series “Worlding Soils : Caring for Soil Communities in Minett” organised by the Master in Architecture (Uni.lu) in collaboration with luca.

Registration

Paulo Tavares

Architect, author, and educator

Paulo Tavares is an architect, author, and educator. His practice dwells at the frontiers between architecture, visual cultures, and advocacy. Operating through multiple media, Tavares’s projects have been featured in various exhibitions and publications worldwide, including the Oslo Architecture Triennial, Istanbul Design Biennale, São Paulo Art Biennial, and most recently the Venice Biennale 2023. He is the author of several books questioning the colonial legacies of modernity, including Des-Habitat (2019), Lucio Costa era Racista? (2022), and Derechos No-Humanos (2022). The curatorial project Terra, in collaboration with Gabriela de Matos, was awarded the Golden Lion for best national participation at La Biennale di Venecia 2023, and Tavares was selected by ArchDaily as one of the Best News Practices of 2023 worldwide. He was co-curator of the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial and is part of the advisory curatorial board of Sharjah Biennial 2023. Tavares teaches at Columbia GSAPP and the University of Brasília, and leads the spatial advocacy agency autonoma.