Join Us Oct 8-9, 15-16 for the International Conference: Defining Architectural Quality
What defines architectural quality? Join us October 8-9 and 15-16 at 14:00 Central European Time for the International Conference on Architectural Quality, including presentation of papers and roundtable discussion. Audience for the online conference is free of charge at https://unav.zoom.us/j/97149731634
International Conference on Architectural Quality
8 and 9, 15 and 16 October 2022
Defining Architectural Quality
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura
Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
Co-Organizers José Manuel Pozo Municio and Wilfried Wang
What defines architectural quality? Is it based on physical facts? Do
the architect's intentions and ideas provide the keys to the building's
evaluation? Is it a matter of cultural context? Does it lie in the eye of
the beholder? Or is it a combination of all of these?
How do architects, critics or historians define architectural quality?
Are there any general methods and theories of architectural quality?
Do we need these at all?
Following the International Conference on Architectural Criticism of
October 2021, this conference presents papers that offer definitions of
architectural quality.
Conference Programme
Each session begins at 14:00 Central European Time
Free access to the Zoom link: https://unav.zoom.us/j/97149731634
Each of the four sessions will be recorded and posted on Youtube.
Session 1 8 Oct - Beyond the Vitruvian Triad
14:00 - Welcome - José Manuel Pozo Municio and Wilfried Wang
Introductions - Co-Chairs: José Manuel Pozo Municio and Horacio Torrent
14:20 - Keynote - Silvia Arango "Quality – and the Recognition of Quality – in Architecture"
15:00 - Discussion
15:30 - Break
15:40 - Paper 1 - Luis Miguel Cortés Sanchez “Reflecting on Temporal Distance in the Recognition of Architectural Quality”
16:00 - Questions
16:10 - Paper 2 - Heidi Boulanger “Eco-Critical Regionalism: Six New Points for the definition of architectural quality in the 21st Century”
16:30 - Questions
16:40 - Roundtable
17:30 - Conclusion
Silvia Arango has been the Professor of History and Theory of Architecture for
undergraduates and graduates at the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the
National University of Colombia in Bogotá since 1980. Born in Bogotá, Colombia,
Silvia Arango received the Diploma of Architect from the University of Andes
(Bogotá); Diploma on Urban Design from the Oxford Polytechnic and PhD in
Urbanism from the University of Paris XII –Créteil.
Her professional work focuses on the history of Latin American architecture
and cities. She has participated in numerous seminars on Latin American Architecture
(SAL). In 1992, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1996 she was awarded
a Getty Institute Grant. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Puerto
Rico – Rio Piedras (2000), and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil
(2003) and was a post-doctoral resident at the Institute of Aesthetic Research at
National University of Mexico (UNAM) (2008), as well as a visiting lecturer at
numerous institutions.
Select bibliography: History of architecture in Colombia (1989), Story of an
itinerary (2002) and City and Architecture. Six Generations that Built Modern Latin
America (2012).
Session 2 9 Oct - Beyond mere Form and Space
14:00 - Introductions - Co-Chairs: Carlos Eduardo Comas and Fernando Diez
14:20 - Keynote - William J. R. Curtis "The Unique and the Universal: Architectural Quality in the Light of History"
15:00 - Discussion
15:30 - Break
15:40 - Paper 1 - Douglas Aguiar “On the Role of Walking in Architecture: Architectural Quality as Spatial Performance"
16:00 - Questions
16:10 - Paper 2 - Vishnu Vasudevan and Hamsika Gammadavelly “Relationships defining Architectural Quality”
16:30 - Questions
16:40 - Roundtable
17:30 - Conclusion
William J. R. Curtis is an award-winning historian, critic, artist and photographer.
Educated at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (BA 1970) and Harvard University
(PhD 1975), he has taught at numerous universities, including Harvard (VES, and
GSD), the AA, London, and Cambridge University, where he was Slade Professor of
Fine Art.
Curtis's best-known books are Modern Architecture Since 1900, 3rd ed.
1996 and Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 2nd ed. 2015, both widely translated
(French, German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese etc.) and
referred to as ‘classics’. In charting a diverse modern tradition, he has extended the
critical map to evaluate many cultures in the developing world, including the Indian
subcontinent, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East.
Curtis has written numerous books and texts, among them Balkrishna Doshi:
an Architecture for India; Denys Lasdun: Architecture, City, Landscape; Teodoro
Gonzalez de Leon, Obra Reunida; Juha Leiviska: Space, Light, Music; he has also
published seminal articles in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and
the Times Literary Supplement. Curtis is an engaged critic who has sat on
international juries and who contributes regularly to journals such as the Architectural
Review, Architectural Record, Arquitectura Viva, D'Architectures, A+D (India), A+U
(Japan), Il Giornale dell'architettura and ARK. He has taken political and polemical
stands in newspapers such as El Païs, La Vanguardia, Le Monde, the Indian
Express. Curtis has written more than twenty monographic texts in the Spanish
review El Croquis, on architects such as Rafael Moneo, Alvaro Siza, Juan Navarro
Baldeweg, Herzog & de Meuron, Tadao Ando and RCR Aranda Pigem Vilalta.
He has also exhibited and published his art-work and photographs
internationally. In 2015, a retrospective exhibition Abstraccion y Luz / Abstraction and
Light: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs by William J.R. Curtis was installed in the
Palace of Carlos V of the Alhambra accompanied by book of the same title with a
preface by Alvaro Siza.
Among Curtis's awards: The Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion, Society of
Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 1984; Critic’s Award Comité International des
Critiques d'Architecture (CICA), 1985; the 1999 Gold Medal of the Tau Sigma Delta
Honor Society in Architecture and Allied Arts (USA); a 50 year Commemoration Medal
from the Museum of Finnish Architecture, 2006; the 2014 Golden Award for Global
Contribution to Architecture (India); CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award, Citation for
Excellence, 2016; Médaille de l’Académie d'Architecture 2022.
Session 3 15 Oct - Built Reality beyond Design
14:00 - Introductions - Co-Chairs: Louise Noelle Gras and Li Xiangning
14:20 - Keynote - Mpho Matsipa "The Uninhabitable: Appearances of architecture and urbanism of the invisible"
15:00 - Discussion
15:30 - Break
15:40 - Paper 1 - Marta Peixoto “Quality for Whom? Critics versus Users”
16:00 - Questions
16:10 - Paper 2 - Mara Bitrou “Architectural Visions and Intangible Materials"
16:30 - Questions
16:40 - Roundtable
17:30 - Conclusion
Mpho Matsipa is an educator, researcher, and curator. Mpho was a Loeb Fellow
'22 at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, and a Chancellor’s Fellow at
the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa in 2021-2022. She received her PhD
in Architecture from UC Berkeley.
She has delivered talks globally and taught Advanced Studio, History and
Theory of Planning and Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning at the
University of the Witwatersrand, The Cooper Union for Art and Science and Columbia
University.
She was a co-investigator on an Andrew Mellon research grant on Mobilities,
has written critical essays on art and architecture and curated several exhibitions and
discursive platforms including the 14th International Architecture Exhibitions at the
Venice Biennale (2008; 2021); chief curator of African Mobilities at the Architecture
Museum, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2018); and Studio-X Johannesburg, in
South Africa (2014-2016).
Mpho is currently an associate curator for the Lubumbashi Biennale (2022)
and working on a publication project on African Mobilities.
Session 4 16 Oct - From City to Detail
14:00 - Introductions - Co-Chairs Jasna Galjer and Wilfried Wang
14:20 - Keynote - Rahul Mehrotra "Architecture in a Time of Flux"
15:00 - Discussion
15:30 - Break
15:40 - Paper 1 - Eric Bellin “Detailing Quality: Relational Thought Across Scales in Architecture"
16:00 - Questions
16:10 - Paper 2 - Priyanka Salunkhe and Naomi Mehta “Architecture beyond Form”
16:30 - Questions
16:40 - Roundtable
17:30 - Conclusion
Rahul Mehrotra is the principal founder of RMA Architects. He divides his time
between working in Mumbai and teaching at the Graduate School of Design at
Harvard University, Boston, where he is Professor of Urban Design and Planning and
the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization.
His Mumbai-based firm, RMA Architects, was founded in 1990. The firm has
designed a software campus for Hewlett Packard in Bangalore, a campus for Magic
Bus (an NGO that works with poor children), led the restoration of the Chowmahalla
Palace in Hyderabad, and formulated a conservation master plan for the Taj Mahal
with the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative. The firm also recently designed and
built a social housing project for 100 elephants and their caretakers in Jaipur. In 2015
RMA Architects completed the Lab of the Future on the Novartis Campus in Basel,
Switzerland and were finalist in an international design competition for the Museum
of Modern Art in Sydney. Recent projects of the firm include a Library for the School
of Architecture at CEPT, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University,
and a School of Public Policy at the IIM Ahmedabad. In 2018 RMA Architects were
awarded the Venice Biennale Juror’s Special Mention for “three projects that address
issues of Intimacy and empathy, gently diffusing social boundaries and hierarchies.”
His writings include co-authoring Bombay: The Cities Within, which covers
the city’s urban history from the 1600s to 1990 and Bombay to Mumbai: Changing
Perspectives; and Taj Mahal : Multiple Narratives. He has also co-authored
Conserving an Image Center: The Fort Precinct in Bombay. Based on this study and
its recommendations, the historic Fort District in Mumbai was declared a
conservation precinct in 1995, a first such designation in India. In 2011, Mehrotra
wrote Architecture in India–Since 1990, a reading of contemporary architecture in
India that was extended into a 2016 exhibition he co-curated at the National Gallery of
Modern Art in Mumbai titled The State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in
India. In 2012–2015, he led a Harvard University-wide research book project
called The Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City. This was followed in
2018 by a co-curated exhibition titled The State of Housing: Realities, Aspirations and
imaginaries in India, which is currently traveling in India.
Mehrotra’s most recent books are Working in Mumbai (2020) and The
Kinetic City and other essays (2021). The former a reflection on his practice evolved
through its association with the city of Bombay/Mumbai. The second book presents
Mehrotra’s writings over the last thirty years and illustrates his long-term
engagement with and analysis of urbanism in India. This work has given rise to a new
conceptualization of the city, which Mehrotra calls the Kinetic City.
Scientific Committee
Elias Constantopoulos, University of Patras
Manuel Cuadra, Director of CICA, Frankfurt am Main/Lima
Fernando Diez, Summa+, U. de Palermo, Buenos Aires
Hélène Jannière, Université Rennes 2
Li Xiangning, Tongji University, Shanghai
Robert McCarter, Washington University, St. Louis
Valerio Paolo Mosco, IUAV
Louise Noelle Gras, UNAM, Mexico CdMx
Şengül Öymen Gür, Beykent Üniversitesi, Istanbul
José Manuel Pozo Municio, Pamplona, ETSAUN
Xing Ruan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Paolo Scrivano, Politecnico di Milano
Ana Tostões, Instituto Técnico Lisbon
Ruth Verde Zein, U. Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo
Supporting Institutions
CICA International Committee of Architectural Critics
Beykent Üniversitesi, Istanbul
Hellenic Institute of Architecture, Athens
Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa
Istituto Universitario Architettura Venezia
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Tongji University, Shanghai
Universidad de Navarra
Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo
IIEs, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima
University of Patras
Washington University, St. Louis
