Kim Förster, Sarah Nichols
In our autumn talks on "Materialisms", we will discuss issues of space and its material articulations as well as phenomena of immaterialities, be it through emergent fields of political, social, digital or ecological changes – or simply by questioning architecture’s traditional position within nature and culture. Kim Förster, Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester and Sarah Nichols, Assistant Professor Assistant professor of Architecture at Rice University in Houston, Texas, will speak about why it is urgent to think about architecture in relation to materials today and what architectural histories of materials contribute to such an approach. Their own work on cement and concrete will be introduced to open up questions about the architectural potential of the recent material turn and new materialisms in the humanities as well as what kinds of historical and environmental knowledge on materials is needed and available in order to shift imaginaries of how we build and live in the future.