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Parity Talks X: Where Do We Stand?

Where Do We Stand? March 4-5th, 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.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 4th March

18:15 – 19:30 Athena Lecture. Christina Varvia: Where Do We Stand? Across the Border

followed by Q&A with Lisa Maillard, by ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE

@HIL E4

Wednesday, 5th March

09:00–14:00 Plenary Programme PARITY TALKS X

09:00 – 09:20 Welcome by Vice Dean and PDK, introduction by Parity Group

@HIL E3 & E4 Foyer

09:20 – 10:50 Keynote. Giving Voice: Transnational Narratives in Architecture & Education

by Igea Troiani, moderated by Nitin Bathla

@HIL E71.1 (TBC)

11:00 – 12:30 Where Do We Stand? Plenum with Former & Current Members of the Parity Group

with Blanka Major, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Daniela Ortiz dos Santos, Giacomo Rossi, Linda Sjøqvist, Orkun Kasap, Qianer Zhu, Torsten Lange, Paul Grieguszies, and Shriya Chaudhry.

moderated by HE Shen 何珅 and Emma Kaufmann LaDuc

@HIL E67 (Rote Hölle)

12:30 – 14:00 Just Soup. Seasonal Vegetable Soup with Sourdough Bread & Wildgreen Pesto

by Airas Sáchez Keller, Anne-Sophie Loretan, Elisaveta Kriman, Franziska Gödicke, Lisa Maillard, Nicolas Rolle, Orkun Kasap, Shriya Chaudhry, Virginia Zaretskie

@HIL E3 & E4 Foyer

14:00 – 17:15 Workshop Programme PARITY TALKS X

14:00 – 17:15 Our Lives in Social Space – A Performative Workshop (per invitation only)

by Paola De Martin, Anh Tran, Orkun Kasap

@HIL D34.2 (architektura office)

14:00 – 15:30 The Architecture of the “War Against Anti-Semitism”: A Critical Excavation, Analysis and Trans-Semitic Imaginarium (register here)

by Sofia Gloor and Jason Oberman

@HIL E2 (Baubibliothek)

14:00 – 15:30 How a Wall Gets to The Hague: Broken: a Documentary at the Heart of International Law by SEKUNDOS (Qianer Zhu, Mona Lecoultre, Carolina Contreras Alvarez, Aymane Filali) with the produder Stefan Ziegler

@HIL E67 (Rote Hölle)

14:00 – 15:30 (Un)Learning Excellence: Organizing for Solidarity in the Design Studio (register here) by Antoine Iweins, Gianna Ledermann, Kyra Michel and Noémie Zurbriggen, Nitin Bathla, Elisaveta Kriman, HE Shen 何珅.

@HIL E3 & E4 Foyer

15:45 – 17:15 Creating with Neurodivergence by Paula-Marie Bugla, Lisa Maillard, and Mikki Soriano.

@HIL E 70.5 (Care.)

15:45 – 17:15 Norm Spotting – Unveiling HIL’s Obstacles by trans*formativ, with Barbara Schaub

@Hönggerberg Campus Public Space, Meeting point in front of HIL main entrance

15:45 – 17:15 Can Your Diversity Speak? A Decolonial Ritual (register here) with Estefania Cuero, Reyaa Wynn Peier Morgado, Unmasking Space by HE Shen 何珅, Nitin Bathla and Elisaveta Kriman

@HIL E67 (Rote Hölle)

17:15 – 18:20 Closing Programme PARITY TALKS X

17:20 – 18:20 Closing Conversation & Parity Group Award Ceremony by Parity Group

@HIL E3 & E4 Foyer

Using the resources from the Prix Meret Oppenheim, awarded to the Parity Group by the Swiss Government in 2023, the group intends to dedicate the prize money to support projects advancing equality, diversity, and inclusion at D-ARCH. To mark the tenth anniversary of the Parity Talks, we are launching a yearly Parity Group Award to recognize outstanding student work critically engaging with themes like gender, sexuality, inequalities, and decolonial perspectives, among others. During the award ceremony, two design or research projects from the past two semesters will be awarded CHF 1,000 each.

18:20 “Geschwellti mit Kääs und Salat” with a Local Wine Pairing

by Airas Sáchez Keller, Anne-Sophie Loretan, Elisaveta Kriman, Franziska Gödicke, Lisa Maillard, Nicolas Rolle, Orkun Kasap, Shriya Chaudhry, Virginia Zaretskie

@HIL E3 & E4 Foyer

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

07.03.2023

Parity Talks VIII

Get your act together!

13.04.2022

Seven Questions Curatorial

Anne Mikoleit / Wuest Partner

06.04.2022

Seven Questions Curatorial

Urbanista

Take Nothing For Granted

Take Nothing for Granted workshop

Take Nothing for Granted workshop

Take Nothing for Granted workshop

Take Nothing for Granted workshop

Author: NCCR DFAB
Tags: #Parity Talks IX #Workshop
Blurb: With Lea Keller, Kim Norgaard Helmersen, Kaitlin McNally & Bianca Vienni Baptista

Inter- and transdisciplinarity are notions we constantly and increasingly find ourselves writing in grant applications, reading in studio briefs and emails, and hearing in talks in lecture halls, TED and YouTube. The academic world has agreed that inter- and transdisciplinarity steers boundary-crossing collaborations towards solving the wicked problems we are facing today. We need to invite people from other disciplines – and from industry – into our design studios and research labs and involve them in our “secret” processes and ideas.

Doing this requires not only trust, readiness to collaborate and openness to critical dialogue; it also requires an awareness of the taken-for-granted – the ability to give an account of oneself. Cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the understanding that the people participating in these collaborations aren’t to be reduced to their disciplines. Researchers and students are human beings with various backgrounds and biographies, with diversity in age, gender, and race, and these all intersect with the disciplinary cultures creating a complex web of positions, potentials for innovative/creative links, but also of conflict. Join us for a guided conversation to learn to navigate in this web, by first of all, sticking with the trouble and taking nothing for granted.