IAF Summer School: CONNECTION _ Radical Cute Banner of Un/Learning

The IAF Summer School: CONNECTION is open to all, including professionals, academics, graduates and students. It is a unique opportunity for architects, artists, activists, creatives, cultural practitioners, community workers, urbanists, geographers, film-makers and anyone with an interest in architecture, sustainability, design and the built environment to come together to question, create, activate, and connect with exciting emerging practices from around Europe.

The Summer School consists of three parts: two weekends in person at the Irish Architecture Foundation headquarters in Dublin and one online session mid-week.

The IAF Summer School is free to attend, but booking is required. It is possible to book for one, two, or all three parts of the Summer School.

Collaboration with LINA Fellows Palace of Un/Learning

Palace of Un/Learning questions the unquestioned in the field of architecture. In times of multiple crises and uncertainty, it sets the challenge to unlearn the status quo in order to rethink the discipline, teaching methods and practice of architecture: How and what do we learn in architecture? Which architecture knowledge is part of the canon we rely on and what remains invisible? How can we design, plan and build without exploiting the environment and labour? So, what is good? Who are "we"? And how can we do less harm with architecture?

Palace of Un/Learning is a project by Bernadette Krejs and Max Utech which creates an open space of exploring, inventing, negotiating and sharing counter-hegemonic design strategies. The Palace aims for more accessible, transformable, affordable, empowering and resource-efficient un/built structures for a maximally diverse urban society. As a visible expression of alternative dissident practices, the Palace creates temporary activist moments… of which the IAF Summer School is one!

Through LINA, Palace of Un/Learning also worked with Archfondas in Vilnius, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, Design Academy Eindhoven, Galerie VIPER in collaboration with UMPRUM in Prague, and the Fundaciò Mies van der Rohe in collaboration with the MODEL festival in Barcelona.

Introductory presentation, Friday 12 May, 18:30-20.00 

On Friday evening, Bernadette Krejs and Max Utech presented the aims and three previous Palace of Un/Learning interventions, to get participants (re)thinking…

Un/Learning Workshop, Saturday 13 May, 10:00-17:00 

On Saturday, participants were invited to co-develop an informal collective public counter-learning space where experiences and knowledge about spatial practice in architecture and city-making can be shared. Together we will build a piece of furniture to collect, share and embody knowledge – amongst participants and with a wider public. It will be a collective space to experiment, provoke, negotiate and claim missing words and spaces, helping us to unlearn the status quo in order to rethink how we want to design, learn and think architecture for a more diverse, queer, feminist and post-colonial future.