The jury highlighted “the unique and rigorous pedagogy of the project, the representation of a highly collaborative and empathetic study culture as well as the recognition of the urgency of coastal adaptation projects in the context of contemporary regulatory environments.” You can see more about the winning entry here.

The award is part of the Barcelona International Biennial of Landscape Architecture, led by Marina Cervera. The Ribas Piera jury included Gary Hilderbrand, Huang Wenjing, Luis Callejas, Eulàlia Gómez-Escoda, and Hayriye Eşbah Tunçay.

Through a combination of lectures, site visits, workshops, and panel discussions, participants explored three questions: firstly, how projects create equitable and meaningful engagements with communities; secondly, how data that is collected and generated can be made accessible to communities that are part of sites; and thirdly, how study and design of a site/project, such as Sayes Court, can be distributed across a wider area.

Speakers included: Ed Wall (University of Greenwich), Roo Angell (Sayes Court), Rosie Martin (Sandwich Club), Tim Waterman (UCL Bartlett), Christina Geros (RCA), Elena Luciano Suastegui (AA), Larry Botchway (POoR Collective), and Alfredo Ramirez (AA).

Learn more about the Field Office workshops here.

This drawings are developed from a keynote address to the I.A.L.E. (International Association of Landscape Ecology) annual conference in Milan (2019) and subsequently developed as a keynote lecture at the Architectural Association (A.A.) in London (2021). Many thanks to Antonella Contin, David Grahame Shane and the organizers of I.A.L.E. and to Alfredo Ramirez at the A.A. for the invitations. I am also grateful to Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim at Harvard Graduate School of Design for the opportunity to develop the research further, including the drawings for a book chapter, for a forthcoming book they are editing.

Outline: Realising the possible requires gaps left open in the intersection of lives and aspirations, ecologies of places and designs, relations and things. It necessitates identifying somewhere to contribute to, navigating space where there seems to be none, and interjecting during pauses in conversations even when the first words are clumsily composed. Making possible also involves struggles—forcing open space for things to happen—and defending that space from occupation, ensuring opportunities for lives excluded and futures denied.

Hope and actions towards making possible require a view of the future: Whether a full perspective of what can be achieved or a partial, constrained, and fleeting interstice, making possible requires a belief in future worlds. Lands taken back from oppressive rule demands belief in a different future, it begins with moments seized and fragments reclaimed. Finding presence in congested cities requires seeking out spaces uninhabited, workplaces left vacant. Contesting emergent publics requires being present, setting forth visions, establishing new relations.

Making Possible, is a 1-day symposium (16 May 2024) exploring how, within austere regimes of tightening controls and oppressive surveillance, possibilities can be identified and constructed, potentialities realised. It is a symposium that explores situations, spaces, and actions of making possible, a discussion of other futures constructed from care, generosity, and compassion—with determination. Between theoretical investigations and grounded empirical research, speakers will discuss what AbdouMalique Simone describes as the ‘possibility for propositions and the rehearsal of experimental ways of living that circumvent debilitating extractions, surveillance, and capture—for the time being.’ (Simone 2022:6)

Speakers: Anushka Athique (Spatial and Digital Ecologies, University of Greenwich), Elisa Cattaneo (Domus Academy / Politecnico di Milano), Kate Davies (Unknown Fields / Architectural Association), Stephen Kennedy (Sound and Image, University of Greenwich), Maria Korolkova (Spatial and Digital Ecologies, University of Greenwich), Justin McGuirk (Future Observatory – Design Museum with AHRC), Victoria Pratt (Invisible Flock), Natasha Trotman (Royal College of Art), and chaired by Ed Wall (Spatial and Digital Ecologies, University of Greenwich).

Publication: A publication will be produced from the discourse, published by the Centre Press in collaboration with Testing-Ground journal, also including contributions from Anna Antonova (Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society), Catherine Maffioletti (Spatial and Digital Ecologies, University of Greenwich), and AbdouMalique Simone (University of Sheffield / Polytechnic University of Turin).

Organisers: The international interdisciplinary symposium is organised by the Centre for Spatial and Digital Ecologies at the University of Greenwich.

The symposium aims to illuminate the transformative effects and driving forces of emerging educational practices, and to foster a dialogue among international researchers and educators in the field of architecture.

Amidst our growing awareness of changing environmental conditions, the Post-Anthropocene provides a context for radical, speculative, hitherto unfamiliar, ethical, ecological and experimental architectural practices. But what are the implications for architecture itself, how does architecture need to be recontextualized to cope with the uncertainties of the climate crisis? It seems time to renegotiate past forces of architectural education and to develop an appropriate vocabulary to capture and document its effects. In doing so, we aim to shed light on the multifaceted dimensions of the outcomes of teaching practices and provide insights that can guide future pedagogical approaches.