Architecture discriminates if we don't start unlearning.
Architecture socializes us as city dwellers regardless of whether we study architecture or not - it is omnipresent. The (urban) space only becomes virtually tangible as soon as we start to engage with all its edges and corners.
The same applies to gender-specific, racist, and all forms of structural discrimination. It impacts directly on urban society, draws artificial boundaries between the 'same' and the 'other‘, and thus constructs spaces, founded on a framework of norms and oppression.
The first student-run Chair of Unlearning at TUM invites you to explore the immaterial and spatial dimensions of this fundamental framework from 27 to 29 April in the Immatrikulationshalle of TUM.
Did you learn anything in your architectural education about the relationship between space and discrimination?
If the answer is no, you are not alone! Therefore, as Chair of Unlearning, we have offered the seminar "Empowering Students Positions. What could teaching for all look like?" to confront this grievance at the university. Education inevitably reproduces discriminatory and Eurocentric norms - even though it would be one of the crucial levers to break down this framework that surrounds us.
In the exhibition "Architecture Discriminates" we draw attention to Unlearning and Relearning.
How are we supposed to design inclusive spaces if we deny our political-social responsibility as architects by not discussing discrimination in and through spaces?
This is why, at the vernissage on 27 April, we will be talking to actors who base their research and practice on anti-racism, activism and critical perspectives on space. Cruz García and Nathalie Frankowski describe in 'A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education' that architecture has been crucial in establishing and cementing settler colonialism and the implementation of extractive and power-executing infrastructures. Fernande Bodo, in her practice as a curatorial researcher at HKW Berlin and co-founder of the podcast 'Architecture is a white discipline', calls for the dismantling of white narratives in architectural teaching and practice. The association Black Creative Builders shows how it can be done by bringing together young Black architectural practitioners in their network and thus giving them the opportunity to claim their space.
The Chair of Unlearning (TUM) sees themself as the first student-led chair at the TU Munich and is part of the self-organised initiative SOFT – School of Transformation (TUM). In 2022 Marie Gnesda, Lisa André and Elena Spatz established the self-led seminar „Empowering student positions. How could teaching for All look like?“ as a result of their bachelor thesis „Chair of Unlearning“. They questioned how and from whom we learn architecture and demanded to unlearn and relearn our Eurocentric, colonial and ignorant architectural canon and culture. The participants of the seminar have become feminist parasites in the university and together have drawn attention to grievances through interventions. They will share this knowledge and experiences resulting from their institutional disobedience in the exhibition „Architektur Diskriminiert." at the TUM. This event is a collaboration between Chair of Unlearning and the Department's Parity Jour Fixe.
Program
27. April 2023 // UNLEARNING WHITE ARCHITECTURE EDUCATION
from 5:30 pm – Vernissage with free drinks, lecture & debates
WAI ARCHITECTURE THINK TANK / Cruz García, Nathalie Frankowski
HKW Berlin, Podcast Architecture is a white discipline / Fernande Bodo
BLACK CREATIVE BUILDERS / Darnel Myers, Abdé Batchati
28. April // OPEN EXHIBITION
12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
29. April // RELEARN NON–NORMATIVE DESIGN TOOLS
from 12:00 pm – Coffee Talk & Intervention Day
EMPOWERING STUDENT POSITIONS How could teaching for all look like? Presentation by students
SPACE INVADING through collective handicraft & Feminist intersectional contact exchange
Where
Immatrikulationshalle
Technische Universität München (TUM)
Arcisstr. 21
80333 München