Anastassia Smirnova: 'The Paradox Box' (Dec 3)
Welcome to an open guest lecture by Anastassia Smirnova, programme director of Strelka Institute in Moscow. The event is the first in the series ‘New School’, inviting institutions of architectural learning and knowledge production founded in the 21st century to present their pedagogy.
Tid: To 2015-12-03 kl 18.00
Plats: Main atelier (A108), KTH Arkitekturskolan, Osquars backe 5
(photo: Strelka copyright)
Designing a program for a school for architecture and urbanism requires a good deal of clairvoyance. Anastassia Smirnova, a researcher and an educator, will talk about how to train urban professionals and what kind of projects they will be able to work with in yet to be imagined settlements of tomorrow.
With the full title "The Paradox Box, or How Strelka Institute probes into the future" the event is the first in the series 'New School', in which institutions founded or recast in the past decade will be invited to present and argue for new models for learning architecture and other spatial practices.
ANASTASSIA SMIRNOVA
is a Rotterdam-based author and researcher.
After graduating in Scenography at Moscow Art Theater School Anastassia, Smirnova worked as a designer, playwright, and a free-lance author for professional and popular press. Among other texts, she published a book about Amsterdam which became a bestseller of the famous Afisha series and survived six editions.
She moved to the Netherlands in 2001, where she collaborated with Rem Koolhaas and OMA/AMO as a free-lance author and consultant. Anastassia joined AMO in 2007-2008 to work on the Hermitage Masterplan project as a researcher and editor.
In 2007, in association with an architect Alexander Sverdlov she established SVESMI (Moscow_Rotterdam), the first Dutch-Russian office for architecture, urbanism and multidisciplinary research. Her current work at SVESMI deals with the problematique of re-design of urban welfare systems and historic preservation as social and cultural issue.
Since its opening in 2010, she has been teaching at Strelka institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow: first, with Rem Koolhaas and, later, with the Swedish educator David Erixon (Hyper Island). In 2012, she became the programming director of the institute and, in collaboration with Erixon, authored “Strelka Method”, a declaration of Strelka educational principles and methodology in 2014. Anastassia currently designs the new international Master's program in Advanced Urban Design: it's a collaboration between Strelka Institute and the research university the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Anastassia Smirnova publishes and lectures internationally. Her texts, projects, translations and research are featured in publications such as Content, Znamia, Hunch, Inostrannaya Literatura, Project International, Volume, and Strelka Press.