Insurgent Practices of Necessity

Cases from a Volatile Field

Ciclo ‘Talks From Africa: Architecture for Everyday Life’

13/11/2024, h. 10:00
Politecnico di Milano, Campus Leonardo, Edificio 11, Aula G.2

“Talks from Africa” is a series of three conferences, taking place between April and November 2024, held by architecture firms working in South Africa. The initiative stems from the need to showcase projects that have approached the particular South African context with a critical approach, placing architecture and the relationship with the city, people, and places at the centre. The aim is to introduce the work of these firms, which are relatively unknown in Europe, and to establish a connection to the current debate on Sub-Saharan African architecture.
The third conference of “Talks from Africa” series will be dedicated to the architect, urbanist and researcher Thireshen Govender practicing in Johannesburg, South Africa. He founded UrbanWorks in 2008, a design-research studio concerning itself with the design and implementation of transformative infrastructures in post-traumatic sites.
In a context of increasing volatility in our cities, as practitioners we are interested in finding new ways of operating that more critically and impactfully responds to the emerging complexity. When sites, relations and politics become increasingly complex and disruptive, we need to define inventive and cunning ways to meaningfully engage in our cities through design. Through a series of projects undertaken in his practice, Thireshen Govender will present a case on how a form of Insurgent Practice has become necessary in these volatile times.

Relatore

Thireshen Govender

Responsabili

Silvia Bodei, Alessio Battistella, Camillo Magni, Maria Chiara Pastore