Join us for the PhD examination of School of Architecture and Urban Design candidate, Olga Subiros.

10:30am - 12:30pm Thursday 27 November.

Displaying Emergency: A Situated Curatorial/Spatial Architecture

Displaying Emergency: A Situated Curatorial/Spatial Architecture responds to the planetary condition of overlapping emergencies—climatic, social, and political. The research asks how architecture and curating can act in this condition without succumbing to dystopian paralysis or technological solutionism. How can such practices unmake extractivist logics and offer regenerative worldviews? It advances the exhibition as a site of collective, sensorial, and critical engagement where urgent issues are addressed through a curatorial/spatial architecture that emerges as an entangled field. The “slash” signals an intra-connected practice to activate publics and transform institutions from within. Through Air/Aria/Aire (Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021) and Matter Matters (Museu del Disseny–DHUB, 2025), alongside pedagogical experiments, publications, and public programs, the research articulates ten situated strategies to be reinterpreted and expanded in other contexts. The outcome offers practical tools and proposes architecture as a performative, reflexive mode fostering collective cultural and institutional transformation in times of chronic emergency.

Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time.

Location: Sala Mirador, Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, 38, c, Sant Martí, 08018 Barcelona, Spain

Image credit: Red Smoke, El Último Grito, 2025 at Matter Matters. Designing with the world exhibition.