Visual Methodologies for a City in the Making

"A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time" (Patrick Geddes, 1904)

The talk

The built environment is a continuously changing field, shaped by multiple forces such as environmental disasters, humanitarian crises and intensifying migration. Through these dramatic events, cities face growing physical, social and cultural divisions.

The talk approaches space as a performative field always in the making, performing and being performed by multiple temporalities, narratives and agents. It presents how diverse visual methodologies can be employed as situated design practices for studying and interpreting cultural and socio-political urban and architectural phenomena.

The discussion unfolds through the presentation of design-led research in architectural, filmic and curatorial practice as well as through pedagogical projects that move across scales: from performing the self in domestic space, to performing collective spaces in the public realm, to performing the architectural archive.

The speaker

Popi Iacovou, Assistant Professor at the University of Cyprus, is a design researcher exploring transdisciplinary approaches to architectural theory and practice. She holds a PhD from The Bartlett and an MPhil in ‘Architecture and the Moving Image’ from the University of Cambridge. Her research examines the intersections between architecture, performance and the moving image, and was recognized with the 2024 Graham Foundation Award.

She has published internationally and her films and design work have been exhibited in festivals and exhibitions such as the Melbourne Design Week 2022, Copenhagen Architecture Festival (2019), the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), Hong Kong and Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2009), among others.

Speaker: Popi Iacovou, Assistant Professor at the University of Cyprus

Coordinator: Alice Buoli

Contacts: alice.buoli@polimi.it