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The nature of place: Petra Kempf on architecture, virtual media our shifting urban terrains

2021-12-01T12:13:00-05:00

Pink umbrellas tumble on hidden winds. IP addresses cross like city streets. Bright islands of community float like balloons tethered to gray infrastructural networks.

In her wall-sized drawing “Confronting Urbanization: The Interactive Tissue of Urban Life Pro[log]ue,” Petra Kempf, assistant professor of architecture and urban design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, combines copious data and mischievous symbolism to explore how smartphones, online commerce, and global connectivity are reshaping the urban terrain.

Hires scan of Petra Kempf’s “Confronting Urbanization: The Interactive Tissue of Urban Life Pro[log]ue.” The full drawing, which measures roughly four meters in length, is featured in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. (Photo: Courtesy Petra Kempf)

Some two years in the making, “Confronting Urbanization” is featured in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, one of the world’s premier architectural showcases, as part o...

Hunts Point | Memories of the Future

2014-08-27T14:51:00-04:00

In collaboration with fifteen poets and community activists from StartUp Box South Bronx, I recently created Memories of the Future, a location-based cinema project viewed on mobile phones. The group experimented with spoken word poetry, site specific performance, and on-site spectatorship to reframe the predominant view of Hunts Point and speak about possibilities for its future from a position of power.

The Architecture of Memory

2012-08-07T14:23:17-04:00

Most of us think of memory as a chamber of the mind, and assume that our capacity to remember is only as good as our brain. But according to some architectural theorists, our memories are products of our body’s experience of physical space. Or, to consolidate the theorem: Our memories are only as good as our buildings.