Off Grid 7: Building Stories with Janina Gosseye

What if the ways we create knowledge also shape the worlds we can imagine? This talk explores how architecture and the built environment might be understood differently through new forms of writing, storytelling, and creative practice. Drawing on feminist thinkers and writers, Netherlands-based academic Janina Gosseye asks who gets access to knowledge—and what might become possible when we move beyond familiar ways of producing it. Gosseye will share examples of experimental writing by feminist scholars, alongside work from her TUDelft seminar, 'Building Stories'. There, first-year master’s students use creative methods to question established ideas and imagine alternative ways of understanding and shaping our world.

This event is supported by QUT’s Queensland Architecture Research Group within series Off Grid: a program of architecture discussions led by Andrew Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at University of Queensland, and Andrew Leach, Professor of Architectural History at Queensland University of Technology, both Meanjin/Brisbane.

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Professor Janina Gosseye is Head of the Building Ideologies Group (BIG) at the TUDelft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft, Netherlands. Her research is situated at the nexus of 20th century architectural and urban history, and social and political history. Her books include Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History (gta Verlag, 2021, with Tom Avermaete) and Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019, with Naomi Stead and Deborah van der Plaat).

Image: Max Loeschke, Eva Vlasblom and Lara Walter, 2024.