Senior Loeb Scholar Lecture: Malkit Shoshan, Tatiana Bilbao, and Elke Krasny, “Building with Care: Feminist Perspectives on Design in Conflict”

Event Description

Our words have the power to cultivate our imagination and actions. By extension, they shape our world. Too often, our relationships with each other and the world are framed through the lens of war. Beyond the over 120 militarized conflicts globally, the word “war” is also used to capture our collective resources to mobilize radical changes – “war on poverty,” “war on crime,” “war on obesity,” “war on climate change,” and some still wage what is called a “war on women.” What if we remove the word “war” and look at our world with care? How can we center care not merely as an abstract idea but as a pragmatic process and ethos of collective well-being? Can we change our world through care and nurture?

This event will feature three short lectures by Malkit Shoshan, Elke Krasny, and Tatiana Bilbao, showcasing work that addresses systemic violence related to gender, race, and class disparity and exploring ways to integrate care into architecture and urbanism from a feminist perspective. The event is part of an ongoing conversation among the three, driven by questions about how to envision building a world aligned with anti-colonial and anti-capitalist viewpoints that remain marginalized in design.

Speakers

Malkit Shoshan is the 2024 Senior Loeb Fellow at Harvard GSD and a 2024 Resident at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. She is a designer, researcher, and writer, and founding director of the architecture think tank FAST (Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory). FAST employs research, advocacy, design, and public art to explore the complex relationships between architecture, urban planning, and human rights.

In 2021, Shoshan was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for her collaborative project Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip: Watermelon, Sardines, Crabs, Sand, and Sediment, which is also the subject of her forthcoming book with Amir Qudaih (Mack Books, 2024). Her award-winning books on spatial equity, peace, and conflict include BLUE: The Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions (Actar, 2023), Atlas of Conflict: Israel-Palestine (Uitgeverij 010, 2010), Village: One Land, Two Systems and Platform Paradise (Damiani Editore, 2014),  Zoo, or the Letter Z, Just After Zionism (NAiM, 2012). Shoshan’s research and design work has been exhibited internationally and featured in prominent newspapers, magazines, and academic journals, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Haaretz, and Harvard Design Magazine.

Tatiana Bilbao, architect, born in 1972, began her eponymous studio in 2004. Prior to this, she was an Advisor in the Ministry of Development and Housing for the Federal District of Mexico City. Bilbao holds a recurrent visiting teaching position at Yale University School of Architecture and has taught at Harvard University GSD, Columbia University GSAPP, Rice University, and Peter Behrens School of Arts at Dusseldorf in Germany, among others. Bilbao’s studio work intersects field research with the construction of an intellectual approach to focus on spaces that aim to become platforms for the possibility and enhancement of life across typologies and in different parts of the world. She has been recognized with several distinctions, including the Kunstpreis Berlin in 2012, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize by the LOCUS Foundation in 2014, the Marcus Prize Award in 2019, Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal of the ACSA 2020, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) 2021, and the Richard Neutra Award in 2022, the architecture recognition of the FIL (International Book Fair) for the professional career of the year 2023, and a Doctorate Honoris Causa for Design from the Boston Architectural College in 2024.

Elke Krasny, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, is a cultural theorist, curator, and author. Her work focuses on practices of care, transnational feminisms, and ecological and social justice in architecture, urbanism, and contemporary art. With Angelika Fitz, Krasny co-edited Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet (MIT Press, 2019). In 2021, Krasny, together with Urska Jurman, initiated Ecologies of Care. Krasny, together with Sophie Lingg and Claudia Lomoschitz, edited Feminist Infrastructural Critique. Life-Affirming Practices against Capital.

Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.

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