Call for Participation: Movement Matters Exploring Transitions in Architecture Research

The open call for Summer School "Movement Matters: Exploring Transitions in Architectural Research" is now accepting applications from PhD and masters students until 13 April 2025. Register through google form on the summer school website. 

In Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie writes, “We are all migrants from a country called the past” (Rushdie, 1992). Rushdie suggests that the movement and transitions we experience are not only spatial but also temporal. The summer school aims to explore the fluidic nature of belonging, identity, and architectural materials which are central concepts in placemaking. The Summer School invites the participants to consider architecture as a dynamic process shaped by movement and transitions across human and non-human actors
instead of static constructs. We aim to highlight movement as both a source and a method in architecture research. We look at movement through three lenses: a) movement in identity and socio-cultural behaviour b) movement of artifacts like waste, building materials as a technological questions and c) movement of more-than-human elements like land, water, flora and fauna in relation to environmental questions.

The Summer School invites participants to take part in four workshops and three guest lectures that explore the above-mentioned topological modalities of movement. The Summer School initiates a conversation about privileging movement as a method in architecture research. We envision a non-hierarchical peer-to-peer working environment where participants bring their methodological strengths, such as writing, drawing, photography, or performative practices and advance their own research and practice looking through the lens of movement and transitions.

The theme of the summer school is based on ‘movement’ and ‘transition’. To position ourselves close to the theme of the summer school, we have accordingly chosen Hotel Passo San Gottardo at Gotthard pass as the venue. Since the middle ages, the Gotthard pass played an important role not only in Swiss, but as a vital connection between the north and the south of continental Europe. Thinking of the hotel at the top of the Gotthard pass as a site of movement and not as destination, we decided to organise the summer school there. The venue provides a unique setting for multi-day workshops, talks, as well as dormitory spaces for the participants. The fee for participation for PhD students is 250 CHF and for masters students 100 CHF.