Architecture against inevitability.

Deljana Iossifova (University of Manchester), Ole Bouman (Tongji University), Geoff Bowker (UC Irvine), Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay (University of Oslo),  Nestor Davidson (Harvard Universtiy), Leandro Minuchin (University of Manchester)

An international, transdisciplinary network to investigate how particular forms of life and their built environments come to appear normal, desirable, and without alternative, and whether architecture can meaningfully intervene in these processes. Architecture is approached here as shorthand for the socio-technical, economic, and cultural mechanisms through which contemporary reality is produced and made resilient. At stake is the gap between imagination and realisation: alternatives are known, but fail to take effect.

The problem is the resilience of systems that should contain mechanisms for their own extinction as they fulfil their purpose, yet are instead organised around their own perpetuation. Architecture, broadly understood, is implicated in this condition, translating critique into continuity and leaving the production of inevitability largely intact.

Through a series of focused workshops and comparative exchanges across Europe, North America, and East Asia, the programme will examine how alternatives are absorbed or rendered impractical. It will identify points of friction, define experimentally grounded approaches to intervention, and establish whether and how interventions can meaningfully disrupt the production of inevitability.