Critical Environments / Critical Positions

Critical Environments / Critical Positions invites a small group of researchers, practitioners and educators to share where they stand, around three simple questions: How do you read the present condition? How do you operate and position yourself within it? What do you act on, and with whom? The first question asks for a diagnosis: the concepts, concerns and territories through which each contributor understands the present. The second asks for a method and a stance: the tools, practices and forms of knowledge they mobilise, and the place from which they work. The third asks for a commitment: the sites, struggles and alliances through which their work takes effect.

Running across these questions is a tension that has long accompanied the discipline, between form and process: between what urbanism proposes and shapes, and the relations through which it acts. Each contributor navigates this tension differently, and we hope their positions will help us rethink how the two inform one another. Presented across two sessions and a closing conversation, the statements aim to open a collective discussion on the directions urbanism might take in the years ahead.

The symposium will count with contributions by Neeraj Bhatia (Columbia GSAPP), René Boer (Loom / Failed Architecture) , Geoffrey Grulois (LoUIsE ULB) , Christina Geros (RCA London) , Catalina Ortiz (UCL Urban Lab) , Ward Verbakel (KU Leuven), and is convened by: Nikos Katsikis and Víctor Muñoz Sanz.