The Emotional Power of Space. 4/4_Giovanna Borasi + Daniel Schwartz with Bêka & Lemoine. Public lecture
Academy of Architecture
Date: 30 November 2023 / 19:30 - 21:30
Public Lectures 2023/24
The Emotional Power of Space
Giovanna Borasi + Daniel Schwartz
I've Been Lonely Lately: Filmmaking as a curatorial practice of coming togetherDaniel Kötter
followed by a conversation with Bêka & Lemoine
Thursday 30 November 2023 19:30
Teatro dell'architettura Mendrisio
Giovanna Borasi and Daniel Schwartz will present an overview of their work together making a three-part documentary film series and investigation, produced by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Each film looked at challenges to urban society, changes in lifestyles and shifting demographic pressures, and highlighted architectural projects trying to imagine new spatial configurations. While discussing the topics of each film - homelessness, solo-living, and aging - Borasi and Schwartz will also share their filmmaking process, curatorial vision, and lingering questions: What role can documentaries play in cultural and research institutions? How do films differ from exhibitions and publications? And what happens when filmmakers and architectural professionals make things together.
Giovanna Borasi, Director, Canadian Center for Architecture
Architect, editor, and curator, Giovanna Borasi joined the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in 2005 as Associate Director of Programs and has held subsequent positions as Curator of Contemporary Architecture (2011-13) and Chief Curator (2014-20). In this role she oversees the CCA’s curatorial trajectories and processes of institutional revaluation. Borasi’s work explores ways of doing architecture that challenge the conventional definition of the architect and that lie at the heart of the dialectic between societal and architectural change. She studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano (1996), worked as an editor of Lotus International (1998–2005) and Lotus Navigator (2000– 2004), and was Deputy Editor in Chief of Abitare (2011–2013). Among Borasi’s recent major projects as a curator are the CCA exhibition and book A Section of Now: Social Norms and Rituals as Sites for Architectural Intervention (2021), and a three-part documentary film series, What It Takes to Make a Home (2019),When We Live Alone (2021), and Where We Grow Older (2023), observing contemporary architecture’s reckoning with salient demographic changes.
Daniel Schwartz is a visual storyteller from and based in Atlanta. His work often focuses on cities, politics, and the relationship between people and place. His films have been featured in festivals, museums, and broadcasters such as the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, The Venice Biennale of Architecture, The Pinakothek der Moderne München, The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Arko Art Center Seoul, Schweizer Fernsehen (SRF), Al Jazeera, Arte, and the Headquarters of the United Nations.
His photography and writing have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Domus, The Süddeutsche Zeitung, Dissent Magazine, Journal of Visual Culture, The Architectural Review, Harvard Design Magazine, Art in America, Architectural Design, and numerous books.
The Emotional Power of Space
Curated by artists-filmmakers Bêka & Lemoine in close line with their own practice, « The Emotional Power of Space » is a series of talks that brings to the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio filmmakers who share a common sensitivity and anthropological approach in the way they bring attention to the relationships between people and their living environment. These talks will present their respective approaches and methodologies and their way of using cinema as a critical tool of observation of the social consequences of rapid urban transformations taking place in different part of the world.
Lectures take place at Teatro dell'architettura Mendrisio and are streamed live.
