A+ Lectures 2025 | Critical Unboxing: projects and processes
In an effort to redefine and broaden the scope of the former ACC lectures, the series is renamed A+lectures. The new series will come with redefined framework, fresh themes, and critical perspectives in the study and research of architecture, design, and cultural heritage among other polytechnical fields. The lecture series proposes to open meaningful dialogue, promote interdisciplinary exchange, and establish its program as a leading platform for critical thought and innovation within an internationally oriented environment. The theme of A+lectures 2025 is Critical Unboxing, playing on the now-common practice of influencers and other figures when ‘openly’ describing and presenting ‘an object of interest’ while emphasizing critical thinking. In the same way the word “box” can be used in graphic design to identify a component (i.e. a text box), in industrial design to refer to a container, or in architecture to define a certain building form. The very idea of unboxing, as unpacking, unwrapping and unveiling, speaks to the act of making visible, of revealing something that before was opaque or in some way hidden. Hence, this year’s series will not only invite speakers to choose one project — in any form — but also ask them to focus on what is usually eclipsed by the object itself, that is, the process. Accordingly, each lecture will become an in-depth experience to understand how that specific project was shaped, unfolding the forces and ideas at play within that process. “Critical Unboxing” will draw from three perspectives: Project as Research, Project as Practice, Project as Pedagogy. The lecture series, curated by a team of DASP PhD students and integrated within the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in architecture, opens to all PhD students, researchers, and professors.
Coordinator
Cristina Coscia
Curators
Mariolina Affatato, Alp Arda, Paolo Bianco, Abdulrahman El-Taliawi, Caterina Juric, Siyi Liu, Eugenio Lux, Marta Rossi, Federica Serra, Rayna Elena Razmilic Triantafilo, Laura Villa Baroncelli, Hongye Wu
Program
01_We the Bacteria | Beatriz Colomina e Mark Wigley
02_Light and Shadow. Projects | José Ignacio Linazasoro
03_Chairs. Tables, beds and Bach. The place of the gramophone in the mordern interior | Tim Benton
04_Thinking with your hands | Giovanni Vaccarini
05_Reclaiming Ruins, Challenging Colonial Emptiness | Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari
06_Transscalar Architecture | Andrés Jaque
07_Practicing the Marshall Plan: How a Sack of Wheat Becomes a Building | Óskar Örn Arnórsson
08_A Primitive Future of Architectural Intelligence | Philip Yuan
09_Transitions: A Reflection in Four Chapters | Mia Roth Čerina
11_African Fabbers Atlas | Paolo Cascone
