Environmental science has shown that the global use of concrete has led to significant challenges today and will seriously trouble future generations. Nevertheless, international building industries advertise concrete as a natural, regional, sustainable, and hence green material. In 2020, global human-made mass exceeded all living biomass, with concrete accounting for nearly half of it, making it a signal of the Capitalocene. A radical transformation of industrial building culture is asked for, otherwise anthropogenic mass will be three times biomass by 2040.

This exposition proposes a method of artistic research that uses (and disobediently misuses) techniques of reconstruction as a mode of performative, artistic, and architectural invention. Our speculative notion of reconstruction challenges inherited disciplinary notions of historiography and simultaneously functions as a propositional and generative tool. The exposition revolves around the discussion of a research and performance project entitled Jakob K., which reconstructs the works of fictional Bauhaus choreographer and gymnastics teacher Jakob Klenke (1874–1941).

This exposition details a methodology for artistic research based on the book Utopia as Method by sociologist Ruth Levitas. It involves specific methods at three levels of analysis: archaeological, architectural, and ontological. Practical work is produced using archaeological and architectural methods, aimed at triangulating onto contemporary ontological issues. The term ‘topian’ was chosen in order to incorporate both utopian and dystopian perspectives — this term, from the Greek ‘topos’ meaning place, frames an artistic practice in relation to one or more sites of investigation.

In general, zoo architecture directs the attention towards the animals. The buildings create ‘frames’ around the animals, as John Berger (1980) states in his 1977 essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’. Following this premise, my work explores visual and psychological aspects of framing, relating to animal housing. Judith Butler (2009) explains how (visual) framings always create meanings and evaluations of what is enclosed within them. Therefore, the representation of animals in human culture affects how we treat animals socio-politically.

Acoustemological Investigation: Sound Diary #Tehran is a research-based project that is being developed as part of my ongoing Ph.D. research. This is accomplished by employing sensory methodology as a research tool for observing and analysing architecture and urban design. Art and architecture have always seemed to me to have the potential for social change and the improvement of the existing social order. They can be emancipatory, assisting in self-development, promoting social justice, and even, in small ways, changing the world we live in.

This exposition explores ideas of narrative and storytelling through sculptures and texts raised from a flat sheet, a kind of visual and spoken poetry which is both particular and multiple. In this paper, the key area of investigation will be the relationship between sculptural and spoken narratives in my practice. This is engaged with in four main areas:

Virtual reality and spatial audio technologies bring about a new paradigm in the fields of architecture and music. Works developed in these media produce experiences beyond what is perceivable in the physical world, extending therefore our capacities to design/compose as well as our sensibilities for spatial and temporal perception. By operating in the spatiotemporal domain, these new media, question our disciplinary understandings of space and time as well as their aesthetics, requiring an altogether new post-disciplinary conception of design/composition and experience.

We invite you to join us on a walk through the newsroom of a regional newspaper, Dagblad van het Noorden. We trace how the journalists perceive, articulate, engage, embrace, challenge, are receptive to, and give form to the ‘atmospheres’ of their workspace. The concept of atmospheres is central in how we have looked at the newsroom. On this walk, we explore the spatial, socio-cultural, rhythmic, tonal, and somatic characteristics of the recently redesigned newsroom, using video, sound, text, and drawing.