Foros

Foros is part of the academic teaching programme at the School. It is a subject that involves debate and reflection on current architecture and consists of a series of lectures that are open to the public. The main objective of the subject is to exchange knowledge, approaches and different views between students and lecturers, and it acts as a tool to understand and perceive the discipline of architecture, as well as a platform for events relating to theory and criticism of the work of architects.

Through open lectures given by nationally and internationally renowned guest lecturers, our Foros series aims to provoke questions and discussions on topical issues as well as reflect and debate matters of vital importance to architects.

With support from:

The 2019/20 edition of Foros featured the following speakers:

Klaus (Klaustoon) is an architectural cartoonist permanently active on the internet. The launching of Klaustoon’s blog in 2009 marked his self-re-fashioning as a tireless critic of the architectural status quo. His work is a general satire of the architectural world: from contemporary events to the architectural star system, and the multiple facets of architectural culture, theory, and history. Klaus is also Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana, architect (ETSA Universidad de Navarra, 2001), Master in Design Studies (Harvard GSD), and PhD (ETSAUN). He currently teaches as a senior lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at the School of Engineering and Architecture (EINA) at the University of Zaragoza, and his main lines of research deal with the interactions between architecture and mass media and the urban visions of the future in architecture and visual arts. MADOLA. Maria Àngels Domingo Laplana, “MADOLA”, is a ceramist, sculptor, painter and multi-faceted artist, established in Premià de Dalt. She studied ceramics at Escola Massana. She also has a degree in Sculpture and a doctorate from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona. Since 1966, she has held individual and collective exhibitions in Spain and internationally and has won numerous awards, including the Special Ceramics Prize from Sotheby’s London or the grant from Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Mallorca. Since 1988, she has created large format works for public spaces. MADOLA is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva, and the World Crafts Council, part of UNESCO in Paris. She is also member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Carme Torrent studied architecture at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Architecture of Barcelona (ETSABUPC). In parallel, she has developed her career in the field of dance, through her own work as well as developing projects with other artists. As a result of her interest in Min Tanak and Hisako Horikawa’s “Body Weather” project, she travelled to Japan, where she worked from 2000 to 2009 with the company Tokason, directed by Tanaka. Between 2012 and 2016 she worked with the choreographer Xavier Le Roy, on work for exhibition spaces, which included Retrospective (Fundació Tàpies, 2012), Untitled, 12 Rooms (Ruhrtriennales Essen, 2012 Festival), 13 Rooms (Sydney, 2013) or Untitled (ImpulsTanz, Vienna, 2016). She currently teaches workshops in the MACAP Master of Scenic Arts Girona-Ljubljana-Dartington and within the Master’s programme E.X.E.R.C.E. in Montpellier. Maroje Mrduljas. Architect, critic and curator, he has authored and edited books on architecture and design. Since 2017 he has served as editor-in-chief of Oris magazine. Maroje has been published in leading international journals including A+U, Archithese, Bauwelt, db and Domus. He curated and contributed to various international exhibitions in art centres such as MoMA (New York) DAM (Frankfurkt), MUO (Zagreb), the Venice Architecture Biennale or Kunstlerhaus (Vienna). Maroje is an independent expert for the EU Mies van der Rohe Prize for Architecture and member of the Committee of Experts of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. Jill Magid is an American conceptual artist, writer, and filmmaker. Magid’s performance-based practice “interrogates structures of power on an intimate level, exploring the emotional, philosophical, and legal tensions that exist between institutions and individual agency.” Magid has frequently worked by forming personal relationships with governmental systems of power, including police and intelligence agencies, questioning these structures of authority on a human level by embedding herself within them. Other projects intervene at contested sites of corporate control, bureaucratic process, and the law. Nicole Aschoff is a sociologist, writer, and editor. She is the author of The Smartphone Society: Technology, Power, and Resistance in the New Gilded Age and The New Prophets of Capital. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University and is currently an editor at large at Jacobin magazine and managing editor of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

Elsie Owusu OBE is an architect and urban designer. Her projects include the UK Supreme Court and London’s Green Park Station. She was runner-up for the RIBA Presidency in 2018, being re-elected to RIBA National Council. Current projects include: a studio/ residency complex for the artist Yinka Shonibare CBE in Lagos; a low-energy home in Sussex an ecodevelopment in Takoradi, Ghana. She is a director of JustGhana, which promotes inward investment and good governance in Ghana with a special focus on environmental education for children and young people through the creative industries. In 2003, she was honoured by the Queen for services to architecture as Founding Chair of the Society of Black Architects.