Wwwriting Series: Digital Invisibles

May 17, 2014

4pm-7pm

Panel 4-5pm

Editathon 5-7pm

 

Wwwriting Series: Digital Invisibles focused on exposing the digital gaps in architecture. Architects, movements, ideas or projects that have been dismissed, forgotten, or discriminated against by the discipline of architecture are introduced for discussion and documentation. Organized together with Arielle Assouline-Lichten, a series of presentations by experts who specialize in research on minority-driven movements, women in architecture, African-American practices, and other architectural “invisibles” preceded a Wikipedia editing workshop led by a group of activists who work to give forgotten architecture a presence on Wikipedia. 

 

Participants included Arielle Assouline-Lichten, Peggy Deamer, Andrea Jeanne Merrett, Anna Kats, Quilian Riano and Ionna Theocharopoulou, among others. The audience was encouraged to bring their own laptops to be part of the Wikipedia Editathon. 

 

SCHEDULE 

4:00 – 5:00pm: Invisible experts 

A group of 5 experts give a 7-minute presentation unveiling Architecture Digital Invisibles. 

 

5:00 – 7:00pm : Wikipedia Editathon

A group of activists guide and monitor the audiences as they update and edit Wikipedia entries based on topics presented by the participants in the first half of the event.  

 

About the Participants

Arielle Assouline-Lichten holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a bachelor degree in Critical Theory and Visual Media from New York University. She is the co-founder of Slash Projects, a multi-disciplinary design firm based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on experience as a driver for new design opportunities between physical and interactive space. Prior to founding Slash Projects, Arielle has worked for BIG, Snøhetta, and Kengo Kuma Architects. She recently led a campaign seeking retroactive recognition of Denise Scott Brown by the Pritzker Prize and is passionate about establishing equality for designers through digital activism.

 

Anna Kats is a writer and researcher focusing on architecture and the built environment. She currently serves as  Architecture and Design Writer at Artinfo, and regularly contributes to a number of publications, including Modern Painters and Art+Auction. She studied architectural history and Slavic languages at Barnard College of Columbia University, where her research focused on histories of Stalinist utopian architecture and city planning. Anna is also an alumna of the Fulbright program, having studied the influence of national identity narratives on adaptive reuse and landmark designation in Latvia. In her writings on both contemporary and historic design, she treats architecture as a tool for investigating hierarchy between cosmopolitan centers and provincial peripheries.


Andrea J. Merrett is a PhD candidate in architecture at Columbia University, writing her dissertation on the history of feminism in American architecture. She has received support for her work through a Buell Oral History Prize, a Schlesinger Library Oral History Grant, and the Milka Bliznakov Prize from the International Archive of Women in Architecture. Andrea is a graduate of the professional program in architecture at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Before studying at Columbia, Andrea practiced at the Montreal firms of Marosi + Troy Architects and Atelier TAG, and the Dublin firm Blackwood Associates Architects. She is currently teaching at the Center for Architecture Foundation and working at the Avery Archive as a bibliographic assistant for the Frank Lloyd Wright collection.

 

Quilian Riano is the founder and principal of DSGN AGNC, a collaborative design/research studio exploring political engagement through architecture, urbanism, art & activism. DSGN AGNC’s work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Harvard University, Cornell University, New York’s Center for Architecture, The Van Alen Institute, Parsons The Newschool for Design, The Queens Museum of Art, The Austrian Cultural Forum, Boston Society of Architects, etc. Quilian holds a Masters of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and currently teaches design studio at Parsons, The New School for Design and Pratt Institute of Technology. In practice and academia, Quilian works with community groups and trans-disciplinary teams to create comprehensive research that can be used to propose a variety of targeted policies, actions and designs at various scales — from pamphlets to architectures to landscapes.

 

Ioanna Theocharopoulou trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London, and received her Ph.D. in Architecture (History & Theory), from Columbia University. She is interested in the social and cultural dimensions of design, in histories of “informal” cities, as well as the question of sustainability around which she has also curated a number of academic events, most recently a conference called Cities and Citizenship, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut New York, and Global Design NYU (March 2014). She is an Assistant Professor at Parsons the New School for Design. 

This event was supported in part by the Norwegian Consulate General New York.



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Wwwriting Series uses the internet and online platforms as a point of departure for critical discussion surrounding the construction of history and practice in architecture and design.