Lara Schrijver: "Fabricating the Future"

The global economic crisis has had deep repercussions on architecture, particularly in western Europe and North America. The beginnings of modernist architecture arose out of similar conditions of crisis. Today, the response of the discipline has largely been one of retreat. Architectural interventions are limited to temporary solutions or offering alternative perspectives. This lecture suggests that the principles of the Bauhaus, which claimed a central position for the architect within society, might have some insights to offer for today.

Lara Schrijver is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the TU Delft . Schrijver holds degrees in architecture from Princeton University and the TU Delft, and received her Ph.D. from the TU Eindhoven in 2005. Schrijver has taught design and theory courses, and was an editor for OASE , journal for architecture, for ten years. Her current work revolves around the role of architecture in the city, and its responsibility in defining the public domain. Her first book, Radical Games , on the influence of the 1960s on contemporary discourse, was published in September 2009.

This open lecture is the first in the series Today's 20th Century: Modernism and after, which invites international researchers and architectural historians to present new readings of the architecture of the 1900s. It is hosted by KTH faculty Christina Pech and  Helena Mattson , architect, researcher and Associate Professor in History and Theory of Architecture at KTH School of Architecture.