Marginalia – Architectural History Symposium & Publication Launch

Orit Halpern is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Concordia University. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard and her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design.

Orit has published widely and has held numerous visiting scholar positions including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at Duke University. She is currently working on two projects. The first involves extreme infrastructures and the second examines the changing relationship between environment, finance, and machine learning. She is also the director of the Speculative Life Research Cluster, a laboratory bridging the arts, environmental sciences, media, and the social sciences.

Luke Jones is an architect and the co-host of About Buildings + Cities, a podcast about architectural history, culture, theory and technology. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design, and a partner at urban ecology practice Heat Island.

Stephen Walker trained as an architect, working in London and Madrid, and then at the Universities of Sheffield and Nottingham. He is currently Head of Architecture at the University of Manchester, and his research encompasses architectural and artistic critical theory, including research into Mediaeval Breton architecture, ring-roads and the work of contemporary artists.

In particular, Stephen has worked with artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Helen Chadwick, about whom he has spoken and published extensively. His recent research has examined the architecture of travelling street fairs and fairgrounds, supported by the RIBA Research Trust.

A short welcome and introduction will be given by Architectural History Programme Director, Peg Rawes.

Orit Halpern, Concordia University, 'Event Horizons and Planetary Tests'

Chaired by Iain Borden

• Sorcha McGarry Hunt, Deliveroo: Vernacular Un-Building the City
• Filippo Foschi, Platform Architecture: An Anonymous History of Warehouses in Tilbury from 1716 – 2015
• Dean Black, The Modern Broiler Chicken, The Female Farmhand and The Artificial Mother: Spatial and Technological Generation of Inter-special Subjectivities in 20th/21st Century Northern Ireland
• Miriam Stoney, "A strait-jacket to developing attitudes" Designing discourse at Broadmoor Hospital

Chaired by Tania Sengupta

• Zoya Hassan, Other Spaces: Self-Representation, Mobility and Agency in Women's Spatial Worlds in 16th – 18th century Mughal India
• Rodrigo Fernandez Berenguer, Domestic Desires, The "House of the Presidents" in Santiago, Chile, as a site of ideological negotiations
• Lu Te-Chen, Unliving House: The Rise and Fall of Lanyu National Housing, 1966 – 1980

Light refreshments will be provided.

Stephen Walker, Manchester University, 'Four Stories of and from the Margins'

Chaired by Jane Rendell

• Jade Benei, Architecture and Design of Le Marais' queer venues
• Irma Delmonte, Self-Building in Venice, An Itinerant critique through the historical sites of the Rebiennale
• Georgios Bousios, Kings Cross Fiction, A History of Urban Change through Novels and Films (1845 – 1988)
• Sophia Edwards, Precarity: Exploring Live/Music spaces through Diurnal and Nocturnal economies in the urban environment

Chaired by Ben Campkin

• Matthew Lloyd Roberts, Experiencing, Describing, Criticising British Architecture, 1660 – 1750
• Joanne Preston, Vernacular Processes: Design Codes for Convoys Wharf (2013 – 2019)
• Joe Thompson, Nostalgia, Authenticity and Identity: Re-imagining everyday 'ghosts' of empire in the pub chain JD Wetherspoon
• James Sims, Pasts Beyond Memory: Urbanity and John Outram's un-built City Projects

Closing comments will be given by Luke Jones, followed by the official publication launch of Marginalia.

Drinks will be provided in the foyer of 22 Gordon Street.