Who makes history?
6. März 2025, 16.30 Uhr Kunstuniversität Linz, Hauptplatz 6, 5. OG, Hörsaal D
raum&designstrategien laden zum Gastvortrag von Samia Henni im Rahmen der Reihe Top down - Button up Dialogues.
Programm
06. März, 16.30 Uhr: öffentlicher Vortrag
07. März, 09.30 Uhr: Seminar, raum&designstrategien
On the struggle for public memories
A dialogue with Samia Henni
Where do changes come from? According with the I-Ching changes come from the bottom. According with the mainstream western culture changes come from the top, achieved by plans, imposed by elites, designed by professionals. Could top down and bottom up practices coop instead of conflict? This year space&designstrategies at Kunstuni Linz proposes a series of lectures that are also part of a course open to all students of Kunstuni. Along with the 2025 Austrian Pavilion at Venice Biennale of Architecture, that this year will hold the discussion on possible collaboration in between Top-Down and Bottom-Up practices through the confrontation in between Vienna planning practices and Rome self-organization practices, the lectures will explore how and if spontaneous creativity and planning and architectural practices could cooperate to achieve a “better living”. The invited artists and architects are all well known academics and practitioner dealing with the issue in different ways.
Samia Henni is a historian and an exhibition maker of the built, destroyed, and imagined environments. She is the author of the award-winning book Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (gta Verlag, 2017, 2022, EN; Editions B42, 2019, FR) and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (If I Can’t Dance, Framer Framed, edition fink, 2024, 2025, EN; Editions B42, 2025, FR), as well as in the editor of the volumes War Zones (gta Verlag, 2018) and Deserts Are Not Empty (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2022, 2025, EN; LetteraVentidue Edizioni, 2024, IT). She is also the maker of various exhibitions, such as Performing Colonial Toxicity (Framer Framed, If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam; gta Exhibitions, Zurich; The Mosaic Rooms, London; Brown University, Providence, 2023–25), Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, 2017–22), Archives: Secret-Défense? (ifa Gallery, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021), and Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020). She received her PhD in the history and theory of architecture (with distinction, ETH Medal) from ETH Zurich and has taught at Princeton University, Cornell University, ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, Geneva University of Art and Design, and McGill University. Samia was an invited tutor (June–July 2023) at the first-ever Biennale College Architettura 2023 at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at Venice Architecture Biennale, the inaugural Albert Hirschman Chair (2020–21) at the Institute of Advanced Study in Marseille, a Geddes Fellow (2021) at Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, a member (2020–23) of the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians, and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for the History of Art at the University of Zurich (2020), at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich (2023–24), and the co-chair (2021–2025) the University Seminar “Beyond France” at Columbia University.
A lecture series by space&designstrategies October 2024 – June 2025
chaired by Lorenzo Romito
