A Summer School stretching from Australia to Portugal
From 16 January to 10 February 2023, we are hosting a new edition of the University of Western Australia’s Summer School, welcoming 16 students enrolled from the third to the fifth year of their degree. Directed by the atelier Aurora Arquitectos and coordinated by Kirill de Lancastre Jedenov and Sérgio Antunes, this summer school is built upon a polyhedric immersive exploration of Lisbon under the title 'A building is not an isolated act'.
The multifaceted training programme is composed of field visits, talks, brainstorming, working sessions and presentations, through which the group is confronted with challenges concerning the specific context of the Portuguese capital. The aim is to explore the means of reading a given project site and how these can be transformative tools, and not a mere protocol for a project’s materialisation.
During this period three exercises are launched with different dynamics and deadlines, focused on methodologies such as interpret, break, copy and distort. The first, developed still in Perth, uses automatic image and speech generators powered by artificial intelligence for a first approach to the identity of Lisbon. The second exercise familiarises the students with the architecture of this city in its multiple dimensions (such as scale, density, or light). By understanding Lisbon's urban and architectural complexity, each participant creates plans, texts, collages and sketches that identify representative patterns of Lisbon and help to understand the singularity of this city's architecture. The last exercise is an ephemeral intervention on Adraga beach, where simple devices such as parasols and windbreaks reorganise this territory.
The programme also includes presentations by the landscape architecture studio Baldios, the modelling and rendering studio 18–25, and Andreia Garcia – the curator of the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 – as well as an invitation to participate in the first Assembly of Thought of Fertile Futures, also in the noble floor of the Palace, on 28 and 29 January 2023.
The University of Western Australia (UWA) was established in 1911 as the State's first university. A century later, the University is now home to four faculties, their attendant schools, and many research institutions and centres. A leading global university, renowned for excellence in education and recognised around the world as a leading research-intensive university.