U T O P I A A
A FESTIVAL FOR RECREATIONAL ARCHITECTURE
If you missed the festival, you can still sign up to enjoy video replays of each event!
100% of ticket sales go towards speakers and supporting the costs of producing this event. If you are a student or creative seeking financial assistance, we are offering scholarships. Please email patch@grayarea.org for more information.
U T O P I A A
A FESTIVAL FOR RECREATIONAL ARCHITECTURE
SAN FRANCISCO / LONDON • 25 & 26 JULY 2020
As COVID-19 prevention measures kicked in worldwide, creative processes and cultural practices typically conducted in the public sphere — schools, museums, offices — moved into our domestic spaces. From students and educators transitioning their kitchen tables into classrooms to working parents sharing their children’s playspace as their office, art and architectural institutions have had to adjust to unique challenges in adapting homes for full-time work. At this critical moment when the personal and professional have become blurred, how can designers reimagine our spaces for both work and play?
Taking up virtual residence at Gray Area throughout 2020, the Architectural Association’s new AA Visiting School San Francisco presents UTOPIAA — a global festival for radical architectural visions to rework our world. This conference features an eclectic mix of online events held across San Francisco and London including live meditation, collaborative workshops, archive digs and panel discussions with leading designers and thinkers from AA, CCA, Gray Area, and SFAI’s global community. The stream of festival programming runs all day in the US and all night in Europe on July 25 & 26, 2020.
FESTIVAL SESSIONS
ALL DAY PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME (PDT) • ALL NIGHT BRITISH SUMMER TIME (BST)
SATURDAY
25th July
10:00 PDT • 18:00 BST
Festival Opening
AAVS SF & Friends
Antje Steinmuller & Neeraj Bhatia, Urban Works Agency, CCA
The festival will open with an introduction by Lingxiu Chong and a keynote address by Antje Steinmuller & Neeraj Bhatia, sharing their research that explores the architecture and social structures of collective living.
11:00 PDT • 19:00 BST
Interstellar Lagoons: A Beginner's Atlas to Peaceful Utopian Design
Tamara Jafar
Encounter other modes of creativity and the utopian imaginary through a guided meditation session led by Tamara Jafar, a multi-media artist, composer and musician and meditator in the Shankaracharya tradition of Advaita Vedanta.
12:00 PDT • 20:00 BST
Tools For Utopia
(Panel Discussion)
Moderated by Keith Krumwiede,
Dean of Architecture, CCA
Tim Ivison & Julia Tcharfas
Betty Ng, COLLECTIVE
Brenda Zhang & Jason Campbell, Space Industries
In an object-based discussion, speakers will explore tools and strategies that communities or individuals deploy, as drawn from a variety of contexts—historical, recent and for the near future.
13:20 PDT • 21:20 BST
Anxiety as Leisure: The sonic principles of Utopia in Italo Disco
Mei-Lan Tan, UMÉ Studio
13:30 PDT • 21:30 BST
Play As Public Forum Workshop
Janette Kim, CCA
Join us to play In It Together, a board game that models political contestation in the face of climate risk.
15:00 PDT • 23:00 BST
Enclosures: A Performance
Tim Ivison & Julia Tcharfas
15:30 PDT • 23:30 BST
Twilight Tea
AAVS SF & Guests
Elizabeth Barelli
Dasha Ortenberg
As the day winds down into dreamland in London, we will discuss architectural worldbuilding and new media, featuring our speakers in conversation with Elizabeth Barelli from Adobe Aero.
16:00 PDT • 00:00 BST
The TEMPLE Show
Joshua Harskamp
& Space Industries
A transatlantic conversation via the airwaves and undersea cables to close Day 1 of UTOPIAA, this special episode of The Temple Show—a London internet radio show hosted by N10.AS—features Space Industries and their radical approach to the built environment.
SUNDAY
26th July
09:00 PDT • 17:00 BST
Archives Exchange: AA x SFAI
San Francisco Art Institute
Architectural Association Archives
A video screening to initiate dialogue between the Architectural Association and San Francisco Art Institute’s institutional archives is initiated around the character of Paffard Keatinge-Clay, an AA alum who designed the 1969 extension to the SFAI campus.
10:00 PDT • 18:00 BST
The Breakfast Club
AAVS SF & Friends
Daniel Ovalle Costal
Lucy Moroney
Nara Ha
11:00 PDT • 19:00 BST
THE EXQuIZICfacts Channel of the IU
LAWuN
David Greene, Eddie Farrell, Pati de Souza, Michael Wedgwood & Quentin Martin
THE EXQuIZICfacts Channel of the IU explores the online quiz culture which has peaked during the time we have all been locked in our homes. Either you control the change or it will be thrust upon you.
12:00 PDT • 20:00 BST
Utopia Modes
(Panel Discussion)
Moderated by Lucy Moroney,
Eidetic Space
Celeste Martore
& Kevin Bernard Moultrie Daye,
Space Industries
Mo Twine
Patrick Morris, iiode.live
Tamara Jafar
Creators discuss how they modulate our experience of physical reality to create encounters, atmosphere and storytelling to evoke new worlds, and how that work will evolve in our socially distanced near-future.
13:20 PDT • 21:20 BST
The Utopia You Find Along The Way
Dasha Ortenberg
13:30 PDT • 21:30 BST
Collaging Utopia: Workshop
Tommy Haddock
Following a short talk about collage in architecture and design - we'll make physical collages with the loose theme of 'Domestic Utopia', seeking to express elements of space that are not always at the forefront of design presentations, such as atmosphere, mood, connectivity, and feeling that environments might evoke.
14:30 PDT • 23:30 BST
Festival Closing
AAVS SF & Friends
OPEN CALLS
New Domestics
Open Call For Bay Area Architecture & Art Students
Submit 3 images and a short write up of a recent project that addresses the theme of domesticity. Projects will be showcased on an online gallery to accompany the festival.
#UtopiaFromHome
Share a photo or short video of a recent moment of utopia in your everyday domestic environment.
DM us at @aavs_sf or tag #UtopiaFromHome.
Submissions will be featured in the festival live stream.
UTOPIAA is a collaboration initiated by AA Visiting School San Francisco Bay Area & Gray Area.
The AA Visiting School San Francisco Bay Area is a new transcontinental platform for architectural discourse and experimentation, held by the Architectural Association in London in partnership with California College of the Arts’ Architecture Division.
AAVS SF’s research theme, PROTO-DOMESTICS, explores alternative approaches to the genre of domestic architecture, drawn from various threads of the history of communes, co-living and other modes of dwelling in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Gray Area’s new initiative Patch responds to the ongoing global crisis by bringing the creative community online to explore new ways of connecting, learning, and preserving intimacy through live streaming, online education, and virtual spaces.
AA Visiting School San Francisco
Lingxiu Chong, Director
Lucy Moroney
Nara Ha
@aavs_sf
sanfrancisco@aaschool.ac.uk
California College of the Arts
cca.edu
Gray Area
grayarea.org
San Francisco Art Institute
sfai.edu