UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School at Penn State kicks off its 2023-24 Lecture and Exhibit Series at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 20 with Mireia Luzárraga, co-founder of the Barcelona-based architecture and design studio TAKK, in the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space. Hosted by the Department of Architecture, the lecture will also be offered via Zoom.

Luzárraga teaches at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation with TAKK co-founder Alejandro Muiño.

Titled “Becoming Post-Natural: Rethinking the Modern Natural Contract,” Luzárraga’s lecture will explore the relationships between architecture, nature and society, as well as question what “natural” means.

“How can it be that, in a world that depletes its resources, rapidly loses biodiversity and modifies its climate forever, it is precisely nature, what we must protect, that is a problem?” Luzárraga said.

“Let’s pose the question in another way: What would happen if we rethought nature as if it were any other object, institution, relationship or contemporary thought, impossible to escape the flows of the capitalist machinery? Maybe the situation would change a little,” she continued.

Luzárraga and Muiño founded TAKK in 2010 with the mission to investigate how architecture can catalyze the development of more democratic lives through the incorporation of feminist thought, ecology, and politics into spatial practices, according to the firm’s website.

TAKK has worked in both the public and private spheres with clients, including FRAC-Centre Val de Loire and IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno), Barcelona City Council, FAD (Foment de les Arts i el Disseny), Vitra, Swatch, Hermès, FITUR (Feria de Turismo) and CA2M (Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo).

TAKK’s work has been exhibited at the Oslo Triennale, and the Venice, San Sebastián, Tallinn, Maia and Rabat Biennales, and has been published in El País, El Mundo, Diari Ara and Architectural Digest.