IKA Lecture Series: Nerea Calvillo | C+ arquitectas

Due to the raise of temperatures and the increase of toxic particles in water and air architecture as a discipline and a practice has focused on creating better and stronger insulations from their surrounding environment. However, what has been left outside? Outside buildings, ways of thinking about nature and the environment, and the bodies that have become disposable? How is architecture connected to environmental injustice?
Heat has become one of the biggest threats of cities, and yet its solution through air conditioning is only making things worse. In addition, environmental issues tend to be studied in isolation, and yet they are all entangled. Heat and air pollution, for instance co-create each other. Through experimental environmental mediations designed by C+arquitectas/In the Air developed in Seoul and Madrid, we will reflect on the challenges of designing outdoor spaces, the role of architecture in the current environmental crisis and how to live in polluted environments.

Nerea Calvillo is an assistant professor at The University of Warwick (Coventry, UK), in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies. Her research explores the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution at the intersection between architecture, feminist studies of technoscience, new materialisms and urban ecological policies. Calvillo established the architecture firm,C+arquitectas, based in Madrid, and London, and initiated in 2008 the collaborative research project In the Air, to explore different forms of making visible air pollution. Her work has been published and exhibited in international venues, like Canadian Centre for Architecture (CA), Laboral Centro de Arte y Produccion Industrial. Gijon (SP) or the Contemporary Art Museum of Santiago de Chile (MAC). Currently In the Air is exhibited at the international exhibition Ecovisionaries, displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts (UK).


HITZE [heat] as a property of bodies, spaces and regions has shaped and continues to shape our thinking about architecture and cities. The lecture series, part of IKA’s 2019/2020 special programme HITZE TAKES COMMAND, examines the spatial culture of temperature, and its broader social and political implications, through the eyes of a number of contemporary thinkers. The historians, artists, scientists and architects assembled in this lecture series will explore the topic of HITZE in dimensions ranging from the soup pot to the troposphere.

Who can think of the future today without consideration of HITZE? Every exceptionally warm day is imagined as portending future disaster, while a sudden cold day provides hope that the ravages of climate change might be mitigated. Our experience of HITZE is overburdened with dread and yet, HITZE is also a form of pleasure – integral to sensations of taste, comfort and sexuality. We hope to discover and understand more about the realm of HITZE in explorations of fields that will shape the future of architecture and urbanism.

The lecture series 2019/2020 is organised and curated by David Gissen and Hannes Stiefel.