BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:RIOT Lecture Series: The Construction of Architecture. Clients\, C
 ontractors\, and Capital\, with Irène Brisson
DTSTART:20260330T160000
DTEND:20260330T173000
DTSTAMP:20260502T100958Z
UID:b38c215f5d03a12038cd4bfa8b35dd50a3c474d06f3f1cbb8cf57eeb
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Irène Brisson\nWho develops\, finances\, and commissions arch
 itecture—and in whose interest? This lecture series examines the often-i
 nvisible forces that shape architectural production—the clients who comm
 ission\, the contractors who build\, and the capital flows that determine 
 what gets realized. While architects are trained to focus on design\, the 
 political economy of construction is largely absent from architectural edu
 cation—sustaining a disciplinary insularity that obscures architecture's
  deep entanglement with capital\, labor\, and power. Yet building is funda
 mentally contingent: dependent on forces beyond the designer's reach\, sha
 ped by actors whose decisions constrain and enable architecture far more t
 han design intentions. The series invites scholars and practitioners whose
  research illuminates these dependencies: the bureaucratization of archite
 ctural practice through corporate management systems\, the client as a Mep
 histophelean figure key to the attainment of projects\, the contractor as 
 a decisive agent in determining how architecture is produced\, and the ent
 anglement of real estate development\, finance\, building\, and urban form
 . By exposing the structural conditions of construction's political econom
 y\, we seek not to lament architecture's lack of autonomy but to work prod
 uctively within its contingencies—essential groundwork for reimagining h
 ow practice might be organized otherwise.\n\n\nIrene Brisson is a built e
 nvironment scholar whose research\, teaching\, and practice center histori
 cally marginalized building cultures and designers in Haiti and the Africa
 n diaspora within a radically expanded field of global architectural histo
 ry. Their current book project\, Kreyòl Architecture: Designing Haitian 
 Dwellings\, is based on their extended ethnographic research with architec
 ts\, planners\, bòsmason\, non-governmental organizations\, and residents
  engaged in housebuilding in Leyogàn\, Haiti. Dr. Brisson is a co-directo
 r of the Caribbean Spatial Justice Lab\, a network of transdisciplinary an
 d transnational design researchers committed to addressing escalating ineq
 uality and climate vulnerability in the greater Caribbean region and its d
 iasporas.\n 
LOCATION:AAC 1 14 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==AAC%201%2014 https://epfl.zo
 om.us/j/67118003322?pwd=Rxn0N5RNHdUNwg0HhBRkRZzWPm8UlX.1
STATUS:CONFIRMED
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR