parity

talks

The Parity group is a fluid group of students, assistants and professors from the department of architecture at ETH Zürich who meet to discuss issues around gender and diversity, organizing the yearly Parity Talks in March.

Supporters of the Parity Talks 2024

 

Department of Architecture (D-ARCH), ETH Zurich

Chair of Architecture and Care

Professur Mosayebi

Chair of Architecture & Urban Design

Group Anne Hultzsch

Art in Space and Time

Studio Theriot

Chair of Being Alive

NEWROPE

gta Exhibitions

Construction Heritage and Preservation

Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture

NCCR Digital Fabrication

Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta)

Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA)

Institute of Design and Architecture (IEA)

universum carrousel journey

Studio Tom Emerson

Chair of Affective Architectures

Chair of the History of Art and Architecture

 

PARTNERS

Womxn in Design (Harvard GSD)

Claiming*Spaces (TU Wien)

DRAG lab (EPFL)

Parity Board (TUM)

and the Parity Front

Email

Instagram

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this website belong solely to the authors, and not necessarily to the ETH Zurich and its departments or the individuals affiliated with ETH Zurich.


Parity Talks X: Where Do We Stand? (working title)

Where Do We Stand? (working title), 4-5 March 2025

On its tenth anniversary, Parity Talks aims to facilitate a collective reflection on where we stand; What has been done? What have we achieved? What does doing parity work in the school mean? Where does the parity and diversity project stand at the D-ARCH? And – equally important – what is yet to be done? 

We want to take this opportunity to look inwards, at institutional structures, questioning privileges and systematic discriminatory practices. We want to expand and elaborate our commitment to parity and diversity issues, and consciously tackle questions that are intimately linked to gender and sexuality but have not yet been adequately addressed, such as decolonial perspectives, classism, racism, ableism, and ageism among others..

Opening with a plenum of past and present Parity Group members, we will continue with a series of workshops collaboratively conceptualised by students, faculty and members of the Parity Group, inviting critical external voices to inform our discourse and reflections. These will be focussed on how privilege and access – or lack thereof – informs the culture at D-ARCH and beyond, and to what extent non-normative positions are present and encouraged in research and teaching. At a crucial point in its life, this year’s Parity Talks are intended as a moment when members of  the department can come together to chart a path forward and devise a series of programs, goals, actions.   

The Fluid Archive

The idea of the fluid archive might have existed since a long time ago. Across wildly divergent geographic contexts and vast time spans, communities that are willing to build resistance against oppression began to talk about alternative futures, listen to voices below the silence, and collect diverse words, talks, texts and ideas that would be otherwise neglected. Collecting not for the sake of owning, but of listening, visiblising and empowering. Hence building such an archive is less about what a world is, but more about what it can become. 

The fluid Archive is an ongoing project of the Parity Group that enables a living archiving culture through saving a space. As a curated platform to present and publish the knowledge production and methodology of the Parity Talks, it aims at creating a research tool that supports bottom-up learning initiatives, and a piece of infrastructure that supports offline events of the Parity Group and possibly the decentralisation of the Parity Talks over the course of the year.

The Fluid Archive is a collective project that grows with the community of the Parity Group.

Calendar

05.03.2024
Parity Talks IX
On Inconvenience
08:00-12:00

The ninth edition of Parity Talks will be taking place on March 5, 6 and 7th 2024. This year, we shift our focus to openly naming the issues which lead to disparity by finding ways to talk – from different positions and bases of knowledge. We aim for inclusive spaces, to share and – most importantly – to listen, in spite and because of the feelings of discomfort and inconvenience that come with it. 

In collaboration with gta Exhibitions and ETH Wohnforum, PARITY TALKS IX will combine  carefully curated lectures, discussions, and exhibitions with events and workshops coming from you – our community within – to give space and time for inconvenient yet critical questions: What does it mean to speak up even though it is inconvenient? Who is able to speak up? Why do we choose to remain silent? Where are our blind and deaf spots? Together, we will address how privilege and dominant narratives might impact who is allowed to speak and who is heard, and will set up collective experiments to expand our listening. 

07.03.2023
Parity Talks VIII
Get your act together!
07:00-19:00

In the upcoming Parity Talks we will focus on taking action and bringing together different actors. After asking what it takes to keep a conversation, a building, an institution in good condition, and reflecting on what we can learn from what’s already happening in the cracks of it, we now start gathering ideas to implement change. How do we mobilise and bring together the grassroot collectivities and intelligences already present (in a conversation, in a building, in an institution) to do what needs to be done and act upon what’s still missing?

“Parity Talks VIII: Get your act together!” will take place in the Architecture Department on the 7th & 8th March 2023. The Dean’s Talk with Paul Bouet, co-hosted by the Dean’s Office and the gta institute, and the Athena Lecture with Anna Puigjaner, co-hosted by the ETH Wohnforum, will kick things off on the evening of the 7th, followed by a day of workshops, discussions and talks on the 8th.

Building on the inputs from the last seven Talks, this edition aims to put things into practice: how to act through design, in what we teach, in how we work and learn together? An open call for actions led to the formation of new constellations and collaborations across different chairs, hierarchies, roles and entities in the department, reminding us that it takes mutual support, solidarity and empathy to get things done. We still act too much on our own terms, let’s get our act together.

13.04.2022
Seven Questions Curatorial
Anne Mikoleit / Wuest Partner
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Link

Guest curator: Parity Group, ETH Zurich Location: ETH Hönggerberg, HIL E67 Rote Hölle Studio Jan de Vylder universum carrousel journey – Carrousel, series of lectures FS 2021

06.04.2022
Seven Questions Curatorial
Urbanista
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Guest curator: Parity Group, ETH Zurich Location: ETH Hönggerberg, HIL E67 Rote Hölle Studio Jan de Vylder universum carrousel journey – Carrousel, series of lectures FS 2021

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Gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language

Glossary entry:


Gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language means speaking and writing in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex, social gender or gender identity, and does not perpetuate gender stereotypes. Given the key role of language in shaping cultural and social attitudes, using gender-inclusive language is a powerful way to promote gender equality and eradicate gender bias. It implies a way of talking about people without assuming their gender. For example, it’s referring to someone you don’t know as “they” rather than using the pronoun “he” or “she,” or addressing a group as “everyone” rather than saying, “hey, guys.”

 

Petra Van Brabandt & Els Silvrants-Barclay

For Parity and Diversity Commission (PDK) & D-ARCH Dean’s Office