Speaker Gabu Heindl

Date 16.11.2022

Time 18:30

Location Atrium, Lee Shau Kee Architecture Building, CUHK; and via Zoom

What is the role of an architect in the future? How can we engage in the complexities of socially and ecologically burning issues? A radical-democratic conception of architecture and urbanism connects with the agency of democratic social and political movements. While the planner brings her expertise into alliances with, eg, anti-racist or feminist politics, she enters into such articulations not without critically examining her own role as bearer of knowledge and, thus, authority. What is at stake is a self-distancing of the expert – while taking responsibility and employing knowledge and planning tools, especially when commons have to be defended/expanded against capital takeovers.

The speaker will unfold these topics with regard to a) current anti-capitalist struggles over housing and public space in Vienna; b) her work on intersectionality in housing; and c) a publicly commissioned non-building plan which became politically articulated in alliance with a bottom-up urban movement.

Prof. Gabu Heindlis an architect, urban planner, and theorist with her office based in Vienna. Professor of Architecture Cities Economies at the University of Kassel, Germany and Diploma Unit Tutor at the AA in London. She has taught as Visiting Professor at Sheffield University and at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

The work of GABU Heindl Architektur is in public space/buildings, collective housing, urban planning/urban research. Studied at Princeton University (as Fulbright Scholar), Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and Geidai University, Tokyo. 2013-2017 Chairwoman of The Austrian Society for Architecture (ÖGFA). Author of numerous publications, curator of exhibitions and symposia. Her work has been exhibited at Venice Biennale, Hong Kong & Shenzhen Biennale, Storefront for Art and Architecture in NY, et al. Gabu lectures internationally, eg, on housing politics of Red Vienna with regard to contemporary Rebel Cities.

Recent books: Building Critique. Architecture and Its Discontents, 2019 (co-editor) and the monograph Stadtkonflikte [Urban Conflicts. Radical Democracy in Architecture and Urbanism], 2020.

Instagram: @gabularasa, @architectureandeconomy, www.gabuheindl.at.

The lecture will be conducted in English. For non-CUHK participants, please register here.

Click here for details of the Public Lecture Series 2022-23.