Digital Research Fellowship

Architectuul is a collaborative open data architecture publication. It was created in 2010 as an online community by a team of architects, graphic designers and software engineers. Architectuul shares outstanding building projects and promotes its creators – from the acclaimed to the forgotten, from the classics to the contemporary, from the beautiful to the bizarre. It is rapidly evolving into the most complete open database of architecture on the internet. Its database content is sourced by its community and curated by an editorial team. Architectuul has currently more than 10,000 active registered users and almost a million followers on social media.

Collaboration with LINA fellows

The Architectuul Fellowship program was developed during the first year of LINA. This program included 4 emerging voices from the selection of LINA fellows, who joined our editorial team and participated in experiential learning in digital publishing for almost half of the year 2023. Their published research was focused on the topic of sustainability, and they presented their work to a broad, global audience via the Architectuul platform. We also created profiles for the fellows on the open-source database to increase the visibility of their work and research. Throughout the program, we collaborated with other LINA members and fellows, incorporating them into our media presentations of the project through published stories, events at conferences, and social media.

The 2023 Digital Research Fellowship selected four fellows — Tevi Allan Mensah, Laura Solsona, Eduard Fernandez (Self-office), and Meriem Chabani (New South) — to join the Architectuul editorial team in Berlin. During this three-month fellowship, participants learned the inner workings of a digital architectural platform and the requirements of modern architectural media. The Architectuul editorial team provided training in digital publishing tools and methods. Fellows also collaborated with the Architectuul online community and LINA members (DAI-SAI, dpr-barcelona, Docomomo Germany, Contineo 2020, and Kaunas 2023) to create digital content showcasing the project collaboration. Additionally, fellows shared their knowledge online, building connections with LINA institutions. Matevž Čelik was the Hackathon key speaker, and all four fellows served as mentors to digital champions.

At the final meeting in Berlin from 25.5. to 28.5.2023, the four fellows met in Berlin. After the matchmaking conference in Ljubljana and several trips to collaborate with member organisations, they arrived and gathered with fresh ideas, new experiences and proposals. This Fellowship intertwines with other disciplines in the final articulation of the work, research, exhibitions, films in the final presentations format for digital publishing via Architectuul. All four fellows were extremely keen on highlighting topics such as changes in the paradigm of architecture or architecture education towards a more resilient future. Following the concept of Linda Tuhiwai Smith described in her book Decolonizing Methodologies the main focus was creating a new vocabulary based on indigenous non written knowledge within collaboration of the local communities in the realization of concrete case studies.

In Berlin, we organized a 5 day workshop between four fellows and students of the Polona Filipič seminar from the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. During afternoon workshop sessions fellows were informally working with students on the cases that were later presented in situ on the tours. We organized 4 tours among them our general tour IBA 1986 Berlin, a tour on community projects in Berlin (Haus der Statistik, Floating University, Tempelhof, Holzmarkt), a tour of Hensselmann, Scharoun and Mies Berlin and Meriem organized a tour with the Flaneur magazine. Allan was rediscovering the sense of border while Laura and Eduard organized speed meeting interviews with 20 different practices from Berlin at Schleusenkrug, Müller-Breslau-Straße 14b. Allan Tevi Mensah focused on the Forgotten Masterpieces that he encountered during the trip to Lisbon. He prepared a story of immanent objects or architectures such as the tracks of the Aerotrain in Orleans, the Isla de los faisanes in Hendaye or the Vassiviere island by Aldo Rossi.

Meriem Chabani was discovering the Sacred spaces/places of care of Berlin combined with a tour created for Flaneur magazine. Laura Solsona and Eduard Fernandez (self-office) gathered and connected different small practices in Berlin that are visible via Instagram and created several interviews on their diverse work in the field of architecture today. All the collaborations with the fellows brought in the forefront the ability to community building both, on specific case study of four fellows and also via our online Architectuul community. Architectuul was created in 2010 as an online community by a team of architects, graphic designers and software engineers. It shares outstanding building projects and promotes its creators – from the acclaimed to the forgotten, from the classics to the contemporary, from the beautiful to the bizarre. It is a collaborative open data architecture publication, which is rapidly evolving into the most complete open database of architecture on the internet. Its database content is sourced by its community and curated by an editorial team. Architectuul has currently more than 10,000 active registered users and almost a million followers on social media. The Fellowship addresses the questions of digital publishing and the online educational processes via open source media. With our program and activities we highlighted the following LINA objectives: resilience (shared content via online open source communities), sustainability (continuous work with fellows also after the end of the first year within searching other opportunities of financing to include them in the editorial work with Architectuul as correspondents), ending spatial discrimination (presentation of decolonizing case studies of fellows and education the university students about them), community (creation of online communities In collaboration with other institutions and universities like Docomomo international, Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, Faculty of Architecture in Skopje, Kaunas European culture capital), connectedness (working on specific issues with online methodologies and dissemination of the results online), reducing inequality (inclusion of people with disadvantaged, stronger the equality of work between men and women, inclusion of the LGBTQ community).