Under specific circumstances, it becomes a tangible construct that can be collectively designed and fostered. The Royal College of Art in London has always been committed to providing a platform for students and tutors to express themselves, feel represented and build layered identities. How are these dynamics daily performed within the complex ecosystems of the school? Starting from ADS7’s explorations, where conviviality is a spatial tool to enable new opportunities for living together with and in difference, we will discuss the overlaps between design and research practices at the scale of the city, the architecture, the object and the body. We will unpack the peculiar interactions that characterise RCA’s multiple laboratories of teaching and learning. Interested in how people’s being within particular sites impacts their being as a person – we will highlight the relational mechanisms in space that turn mere co-presence and cohabitation into actual collaboration.
WITH
Adrian Lahoud
Dr. Adrian Lahoud is Dean, School of Architecture and Fellow at the Royal College of Art in London. He sits on the board of the Architecture Foundation, Design Museum Future Observatory, New Architecture Writers, and was Convenor and Co-Chair of the Rights of Future Generation Working Group. Prior to his role at RCA, he was director of the MA programme at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths and Studio Master in the Projective Cities MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design at the Architectural Association.
Beth Hughes
Beth Hughes is Head of Programme, MA Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. Director of her own practice, she has worked on projects of all scales, public and private, around the world. Her work has been extensively published and awarded in several international competitions including Europan 10 Norway and the Nordic Built Challenge Denmark. Beth has taught design and history & theory at several universities including: the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), the University of Cambridge and the University of Syracuse.
Dubravka Sekulić
Dubravka Sekulić is an architect, theorist, educator and the Head of Programme, MA City Design at the Royal College of Art in London. Her research explores transformations of contemporary cities, at the nexus between the production of space, laws, and economy. She holds a PhD from gta the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich (CH) on the relationship between the Yugoslav construction industry and the Non-aligned Movement. She is a researcher for the project Curatorial Design: A place between and as a co-editor of the relational digital publication Total Reconstruction.
Zowie Broach
Zowie Broach has been Head of Programme, MA Fashion at the Royal College of Art since 2015. Broach is known as the co-founder of avant-garde design studio and brand B O U D I CC A. In her role as programme lead, she encourages her students to transcend the conventions of the ‘graduate collection’, pushing them to question their own identity, values and aesthetic choices on a deeper level. The result is that fashion at the RCA today is no longer solely about clothes, but instead a far-reaching and holistic investigation of the meaning of creativity itself.
Delfina Fantini van Ditmar
Dr Delfina Fantini van Ditmar is a biologist and design researcher. She currently teaches in the MA Fashion, and previously worked at the MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering and at the Design Products Programme. Her practice is concerned with ecological thinking, reflective systemic practices, regeneration, more than human approaches and alternative futures. In 2021 she was selected as one of the Future Observatory Design Researcher in Residency (DRiR) at the Design Museum and co-founded the Design Research Society (DRS) Special Interest Group “Design and Ethics”.
Lemonot (Sabrina Morreale + Lorenzo Perri)
Lemonot is a duo that combines spatial and relational practices, operating between architecture and performative arts – using them as tools to detect, celebrate and trigger the spontaneous theatre of everyday life. They collaborate with multiple organisations, festivals and cultural institutions – among the others, LINA European Architecture Platform, MEXTROPOLI, CAFx Copenhagen, DPR Barcelona and La Biennale di Venezia. Both graduated from the Architectural Association, they taught across Europe, Vienna, Latin America and Bangkok. Currently, they lead Architectural Design Studio 7 at the Royal College of Art, London – exploring conviviality as a gentle form of resistance and spatial activism.