Labbing Storywork:

The research project explores the intersection of architecture education and spatial community pedagogies, grounded in my long-term engagement with the neighborhood of Hammarkullen, Gothenburg. Set in a context of systemic marginalization and urban policy challenges, it employs ethnographic immersion, participatory action research, and storywork. Through five chapters, the thesis highlights local practices of community organization, cultural identity, governance, material circularity, and collaborative learning. The findings reflect how local narratives, and everyday spatial practices foster alternative modes of knowledge production and engagement.

The research unfolds through the conceptual lenses of five “labbing situations” exploring facets of spatial community pedagogies in Hammarkullen: worlding, finding, tuning, sharing, and listening. These collaborative frameworks engage local networks to reimagine narratives of diasporic belonging and oral heritage, mediate tenant-housing conflicts, and foster circularity through solidarity. Each chapter investigates ‘labbing’ as a situated, co-creative, and relational act. By framing ‘labbing’ as an evolving methodological ecology rather than a fixed model, the thesis explores new pathways for architectural research and education to engage ethically and effectively with community-led urban transformation.

The research seminar centers on two thesis chapters: the introduction and “Listening as Labbing.” The latter focuses on a community-based educational initiative co-developed with Angered Folkhögskola in Hammarkullen. Through autobiographical filmmaking, residents became co-learners and co-authors of spatial community narratives, shifting from storytelling to storylistening as a transformative, collaborative act. The process foregrounded listening as a pedagogical tool for inclusion, healing, and belonging, fostering counter-narratives rooted in everyday experience and pride. The chapter reflects about listening as an ethical method within situated learning – including discussions about the challenges and pitfalls of community-based educational models as processes of spatial justice.

IIf you would like a copy of the manuscript please contact Emilio: edcb@kth.se

The Opponent for the seminar will be Professor Doina Petrescu, University of Shefield

Bio's
Emilio Brandao is an architect and PhD-student at KTH School of Architecture, within the project CoNECT: Collective Networks of Everyday Community Resilience and Ecological Transition. And for the last 12 years he has been a lecturer in design activism at Chalmers University of Technology. Both his research and awarded teaching experience (UIA Innovation in Architectural Education Award 2022-2023) are interested in urban practices and pedagogies for social inclusion and community resilience. Emilio works with collaborative methodologies of co-creation, and design and build, together with multiple local actors. His work engages with contexts highly challenged by diverse socioeconomic inequalities and urban injustices, both locally in Sweden and internationally, and built on experience from architectural practice, action-based teaching and research, and active engagement in NGOs.

Doina Petrescu is the Chair of Architecture and Design Activism at the School of Architecture and Landscape, Sheffield University. She is also the principal of Atelier d´Architecture Autogérée (AAA) based in Paris. Her research has focused on three main strands – Gender and Space, Participation in Architecture and Co-production, and Urban Resilience, and led to following publications Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (Routledge 2006), Architecture Otherhow: Research in Contemporary Practice (Routledge 2018), Architecture and Participation (Spon Press, 2005), Architecture and Resilience (Routledge 2019) and Urban Commons Handbook, (dpr-barcelona, 2022). With AAA, she has won numerous prizes for different projects such as EcoBox, Passage56, and R-Urban.