For sociologists and philosophers, agency is the capacity of an entity to act in any given environment. In recent years, architecture has been confronted with an ever-changing social, economic, political and built environment; thus the practice has been constantly challenged to define, discuss and adapt its agency to respond in the most appropriate way and become an instrument of change.

The agency of architecture necessarily implies questioning the relationship between theory and practice; and we are inevitably unable to dissociate our work as architects from our personal behaviour and actions inasmuch as agency is also the capacity for human beings to make choices, choices that affect our neighbourhoods and even the configuration of our cities. In this sense, the agency of architecture can be understood as a catalyst for creating alternatives for the built environment, and there are as many ways of doing so as there are ways of practicing architecture: from research to urban interventions, exhibitions and building.

This capacity of architecture to adapt, react and respond to specific circumstances is visible in the work of practitioners from a diverse set of backgrounds and projects. From small scale studios to big offices, our aim is to give voice to those practices that constantly seek to enrich, subvert or even put in crisis what we assume to be the agency of architecture.

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This new edition of the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture’s Foros lecture series hinges on the title “The Agency of Architecture”, a concept which encourages reflection on architects’ ability to enrich, alter or even call into question their own environment.

The 2017 Foros series will be directed by architect, critic and curator Ethel Baraona Pohl, co-founder with César Reyes of the research practice and independent publishing house dpr-barcelona.

The 2017 Foros series will feature talks by renowned architects from a host of different backgrounds, who together will provide a broader overview of architecture. The line up and dates are:

6 February, Ines Weizman, director of the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and Planning at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
20 February, Ippolito Pestellini, partner in OMA/AMO.
6 March, GOIG, a young Catalan architecture studio run by Pol Esteve and Miquel Mariné.
20 March, Markus Bader, co-founder of Raumlabor and director of Urban School Ruhr (20 March).
3 April, Rafi Segal, architect and professor at MIT.
24 April, María Langarita, founder of Langarita-Navarro.
8 May, Arno Brandlhuber, architect.

More info: UIC Barcelona School of Architecture

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dpr-barcelona is an architectural research practice and independent publishing house based in Barcelona, founded by Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera, dealing with three main lines: publishing, criticism and curating. Their work explore how architecture as discipline reacts in the intersection with politics, technology, economy and social issues. Their research and theoretical work is linked to leading publications in architectural discourse, such as Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme, MAS Context, and as Archis advisors for Volume magazine, among many others. Curators of the third Think Space programme with the theme “Money”. Recently they have curated [with Pelin Tan] the exhibition Adhocracy ATHENS at the Onassis Cultural Center, 2015. dpr-barcelona is member of the Future Architecture platform, the first pan-European platform of architecture museums, festivals and producers, bringing ideas on the future of cities and architecture closer to the wider public.

More info: www.dpr-barcelona.com | @dpr_barcelona