Post World's End Architecture - Events at the Serpentine

Blueprint is the media partner for two events at the Serpentine this summer organised and chaired by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado.

The theme, Post World's End Architecture, continues a series of features in Blueprint magazine and ongoing discussions. These two debates, in partnership with Spain (NOW!), will explore the concept of urban public space and its relation with political dissidence through the voices of emerging architecture practices and thinkers who consider public space the starting point to rethink the assets of our cities. The events are free but booking is essential, via the Serpentine Galleries' website.

1 The Power of Many

25 July - 3pm

In 2011 the Occupy movement catalysed unrest and the will for change all over the world, while north African countries experienced the upheaval and resulting political and social changes, commonly labelled the Arab Spring. Then the public space recovered its original meaning, representing a place for political dissidence, and its governance began to be one of the central topics and claims for many young European architects. This panel discussion is chaired by Gonzalo Herrero with representatives of Zuloark and Assemble, two collective practices working with architecture as a political tool to improve the city and its communities.

Assemble is a collective based in London that works across the fields of art, architecture and design. Assemble's working practice seeks to address the typical disconnection between the public and the process by which places are made. Its projects often deploy unconventional means, are self-initiated, self-made or self-organised, subverting typical hierarchies and procedures surrounding the realisation of architectural spaces.

Zuloark is a Madrid-based architecture collective established in 2001, linked to the construction of open networks, thought to match with the necessity of evolving economic and entrepreneur models. It is involved in designing and constructing furniture and urban installation projects, and is part of the meta-studio Zoohaus networking platform, collaborating in the project IC - Inteligencias Colectivas.

2 Architectural Dissidence in the Public Arena

15 August - 3pm

The public space is a complex scenario that involves many different interests and actors including citizens, public administrations, private clients. All these forms of influence open the door to large uncertainties. Can architects and designers stimulate the self-organisation of citizens and facilitate social interaction within the communities through public space? Can contemporary public space provoke real structural changes in the system we live in? A lecture by architect and critic Ethel Baraona is followed by an open conversation with architect and curator Gonzalo Herrero.

Gonzalo Herrero Delicado is an architect, curator and writer of contemporary architecture and design based in London. Trained at the University of Alicante, he has worked for a number of international practices, including Lacaton & Vassal in Paris, before moving to London to work as curator of The Architecture Foundation, in charge of its public programme of events. He is currently focusing on a number of independent projects between Spain and UK, exploring the role of the architect in the public realm through new curating formats that connect architecture and society.

Ethel Baraona Pohl is a critic, writer and curator. She is co-founder, with César Reyes, of the independent research studio and publishing house dpr-barcelona, operating in the fields of architecture, political theory and the social milieu. She was associate curator for Adhocracy, first commissioned for the Istanbul Design Biennial in 2012, and together with Reyes is currently curating the exhibition Adhocracy ATHENS at the Onassis Cultural Center, Athens, which is open until 5 July.

Book here: http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/explore/event