IE School of Architecture & Design Newsletter - March 2022
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time to focus on
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BUILDING SKYWARDS EVERY MONTH
March is in full swing with celebrations around International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. But what happens when March is over? How do we ensure that the fervor, support and effort for advancement continues and accelerates?
Ever since I started Madame Architect, an online magazine designed to break the architect’s mold and celebrate the extraordinary women that shape our world, I’ve seen many other grassroots efforts to amplify women in the architecture and design community. The author Karrie Jacobs set a fantastic precedent for us, with hard-hitting pieces like A Tall Order, in which she highlights female architects “building skywards”, and The Tallest Tower in the US is being Built by a Woman, which features Nicole Bosso’s work on One World Trade Center.
There are two approaches to even the scale and ensure effective female representation, both equally important: on the one hand, special platforms for women; on the other, platforms that position women and non-binary folk within space primarily dominated by men. Women can’t only be featured in panels and articles to address their gender — there needs to be a focus on the excellence of their work, research, and expertise.
The month of March will pass, but the energy around recognizing and celebrating talented women in the field should not. Let’s honor, encourage, support, write about, award and pay the women that advance the practice of architecture in every month and year that follows.
Julia Gamolina
Founder of Madame Architect
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Will the metaverse reflect or reject our world's systemic biases?
Are you in the metaverse yet? If so, we'll see you there. On Friday 25 March at 5pm CET, IE School of Architecture and Design hosts the Metaverse Summit’s first Madrid meetup - and it can be attended in person, online or through the metaverse itself.
With their expertise in the development and execution of spatial environments, who better than architects and designers to lead in creating the 3D virtual spaces of the metaverse? “It is our duty to get involved and help shape the future of the internet,” says Fatemeh Monfared, Founder and Chief Metaverse Architect at Spaces DAO, and member of the Madrid hosting team. “We’ve been given a fresh canvas and we need to act responsibly and creatively.”
This new reality of space, identity and interaction, where we might exist as virtual avatars, raises fascinating questions regarding inclusive and diverse representation. In a world designed for and by maleness, whiteness, wealth, heteronormativity, and other discourses that dominate, exclude and oppress others, the metaverse can either mirror the structures of our current world or create more diversity, enable agency and avoid stereotypes," says Cristina Mateo, Associate Dean at IE School of Architecture and Design. “People from different ethnicities, genders, backgrounds and experiences must lead the process of designing a metaverse that is equitable and inclusive.”
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Accessible design:
Combating ableism in the built environment
Architecture must go beyond traditional conversations around form, space and materials in order to address current social challenges related to inequality, marginalization and access.
Every Spring semester, students of our Design Studio 6 course, titled ‘Extra-Ordinary Projects’, investigate the role of architecture in enabling a more equitable society by providing spatial responses to the issues faced by some of society’s most disenfranchised groups. Over the years, these have included victims of domestic violence, undocumented migrant minors and the elderly; this year, the focus is on disabilities, from Down's syndrome and cerebral palsy to autism spectrum disorders and physical impairments, and how the built environment can be designed for universal accessibility, meeting the needs of people of all abilities.
“The World Health Organisation defines disability as not only a health condition but also the result of the interaction with our environment,” says professor Romina Canna, who directs the course. “We have a responsibility to address this issue beyond normative responses like ramps, adapted bathrooms and special dimensions. We have the tools to propose change and to take a more comprehensive approach to a sensitive issue.”
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Community-building
and social cohesion:
Real estate development in Mexico City
With a metropolitan population of over 21 million, a wide wealth gap, accelerated urban growth and a location making it vulnerable to environmental phenomena, Mexico City faces pressing demographic infrastructural, mobility and architectural challenges.
What role can the real estate sector play in addressing such challenges? The students of our Global Master in Real Estate Development (GMRED) went to the Mexican capital last week to find out. They saw how crowdfunding and fin-tech are creating new vehicles for investment; and they witnessed several innovative approaches to development, such as retrofitting project La Laguna, a former textile factory in the historic center developed by Reurbano, seeking to encourage local business, attract creativity to area and discourage car use in a city which around 17 million workers commute in and out of every day.
By focusing on regeneration, preserving heritage and creating proximity between home, work and leisure such real estate initiatives can develop with strong social purpose nurturing the community and social fabric of a city.
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Pritzker Laureate 2022:
The transformative power of architecture
Burkina Faso-born architect Diébédo Francis Kéré has been awarded this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize for his work in empowering and transforming communities, reflecting a positive evolution in architecture prizes, says Martha Thorne, Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design. "Architecture and architects can and should be transformative,” she comments. "Diébédo Francis Keré clearly shows that one can serve all communities, even and especially the most needy, through good design. He highlights his responsible approach towards environments at all scales, respecting the global natural environment, the local context, and the people who will use his buildings. He is a fresh and necessary voice pointing the way towards the true role of architecture for all.”
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Caring City:
Paths towards inclusive urban design
Anyone who stepped into the ‘Connective Nature’ exhibition at Madrid Design Festival, found themselves in an urban oasis that evoked the shapes and sounds of a forest, inviting them to reconnect with nature and with others. The designer is Izaskun Chinchilla, professor at IE School of Architecture and Design and author of ‘The Caring City’ (2020), who believes that the diversity of an urban population’s ages, genders, races, abilities and socioeconomic conditions must define how its spaces are designed. A leading figure in inclusive urban design, Chinchilla argues that cities are still being designed primarily for users from majority social groups, thus excluding vulnerability and difference. “I understand the extraordinary diversity of our reality, whether children walking home alone for the first time or elderly people with dementia,” says the architect. “A city needs to be designed with everyone in mind, not just for the stereotypical Caucasian male that commutes to work.”
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Technology:
A world of possibility at IE FabLabs
"Technology does not understand race, gender, age or culture,” say Elena Cardiel and Lorena Delgado, who run IE School of Architecture and Design’s FabLabs - which is precisely why the field has such liberating and transformative possibilities. Both describe the FabLab as a community of makers and digital artisans supported by technology and innovation, where free and collaborative knowledge can enrich lives and advance society.
Cardiel also works as a mentor for STEM Talent Girl, a training programme designed to foster girls’ vocation for science and technology. Through a shadow scheme, some of her mentees can also get a taste of life at the IE FabLab. “The aim is for these young women to see first-hand what a career as an engineer, mathematician, scientist or technologist entails” she explains. "STEM careers will be a notable part of the future, therefore, promoting these teachings can be a way to achieve more egalitarian structures.”
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Wellbeing and mental health in the built environment
With the lockdowns and confinements imposed by the first year of COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression rose by 25 per cent, according to figures released this month by the World Health Organisation. Fátima Abel, alumna of our Master in Business for Architecture and Design (MBArch), believes this spike in mental health issues has put design’s impact on wellbeing front and center, with people more conscious than ever of how we are psychologically impacted by the design of the spaces we occupy. As we emerge from the restrictions of the pandemic, Abel is hopeful that city design will increasingly emphasize inclusive amenities, green space, urban farming, sustainable mobility and pedestrianization.“The dynamics of the world are changing,” she says, “and so will the spaces that we interact with.”
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Women in Real Estate
March 30, 6pm CET
Online
Women are leading innovation and development in the real estate sector of many countries, however, recent research finds tht female representation at executive management and board level is still falling short. Initiatives like our Women in Real Estate High Potential Awards aim to address this, by putting female students on the path to leadership.
At our upcoming event, Leticia Ponz, head of Union Investment Real Estate Spain and deputy chair of Women in Real Estate Spain, moderates a discussion featuring four experts: Cristina García-Peri of Azora Capital, Paloma Relinque of CBRE, Tania Concejo-Bontemps of Union Investment Real Estate France, and Susana Rodríguez of Savills Aguirre Newman. These leading figures in real estate will discuss sectror trends for 2022, including gender representation, digitisation and the role that ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria are playing in city-making in the post-COVID era.
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Beyond Scale:
Iñaki Carnicero
March 30, 6pm CET
IE Tower and Online
In the upcoming edition of our Beyond Scale lecture series, we welcome Iñaki Carnicero, Director General of Urban Agenda and Architecture at Spain’s transport and mobility ministry. Carnicero is co-founder of RICA* Studio, an architectural practice based between Madrid and New York working across a diverse range of scales.
Now, as one of the most influential figures in the Spanish government when it comes to urban policy, Carnicero joins us to share exclusive insights on the future of our cities and our role as architects within them. He is yet another pioneering figure in the sector to join us for this new series of talks, which tackles topics pertaining to the spatial dimensions of architecture and design but also have significant impact beyond our discipline.
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