AAI Lecture : Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, an urban designer, a scholar and an educator. Her strategic practice produces outputs of various forms; studios and seminars, readings, publications, drawings, comic books, exhibitions, installations, podcasts, videos, curation, pamphlets, talks and lectures, excel sheets and poetry, interiors and architecture projects. 

For her, architecture is a discipline that thrives by borrowing and learning from other fields, as well as a unique tool to understand and design our world, a perogative that comes with a responsibility embedded in the current state of the Earth. Against a backdrop of unprecedented environmental degradation, geopolitical insecurities and growing social and spatial injustice, architecture and urbanism must address and confront these urgencies in the face of an uncertain future.

Charlotte's current research includes the following;

'Architecture of Extraction: Space and the Political Economy of Construction Materials, Mineral Wealth, and Resource Exhaustion', which investigates both the global actors engaged in contemporary forms of resource extraction and appropriation—specifically mineral wealth, and their physical effects on territories. The underlying goal is to uncover and explicate the relationship between extraction capitalism, the built environment and knowledge systems via spatial outcomes, from architectural outputs to logistical networks, and discusses current neocolonial expansion in relation to the extraction industry as a planetary project, with the objective of constructing a critique of the contemporary forms of resource extraction and of the enabling predatory economics that allow for the production of the built environment, our infrastructure, our cities, our homes, our lives—aiming thus to define a political economy of construction materials. 

“A Global Moratorium on New Construction” is an initiative - and a provocation - that argues that a drastic change to construction protocols is necessary: the suspension of new building activity must be enforced. The intent is to steer a conversation among architects and planners, (but also industry actors, policymakers, activists, and citizens), on the role of construction in generating untenable ecological and social injustice, and to find ways to take action. In March 2020, Bruno Latour’s questionnaire was making the rounds, touting that “if everything is stopped, everything can be questioned, bent, selected, sorted, interrupted for good.” Yet, worldwide, construction sites largely kept operating. The pause offered by the pandemic to question our societal model as advocated by Latour did not happen. Critical questions about the profession remained unaddressed. The moratorium emerged as a provocation to think, at the threshold between the need to pause, and the reality of extractivist practices on which we rely. The intent is to approach the discussion from different angles — for planning disciplines (what does it mean for designers to stop building), but also taking into account global inequalities (overbuilding versus lack of housing depending on contexts), construction vs distribution, etc- to address all these complexities, gathering and hearing several voices.

'Eileen Gray; A House Under the Sun', is a graphic novel published in 2019 with Nobrow London. Sparked by a reading of Beatriz Colomina's contentious paper 'Battle Lines: E1027', the desire to illuminate the architecture of Gray, the project fits into pursuing a political agenda of exposing female designers' work and doing justice to their overlooked careers. First envisioned as an opera libretto, then as a script, the format of a graphic novel imposed itself as the right media to convey a story accessible to non-architects and professionals alike.

Members that are entitled to complimentary tickets as part of their membership benefits can access these using the email address used to register the membership, as per the following instructions.

Go to the Eventbrite page (Link above)
Click on Tickets
Click on Enter Promo Code
Enter the membership email address
This should allow you to book a ticket free of charge

If you have any queries regarding your membership status or benefits please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

AAI Patrons
O’Mahony Pike Architects

AAI Sponsors
Scott Tallon Walker Architects
Henry J Lyons Architecture
van Dijk Architects

AAI Supporters
Ryan Kennihan Architects
O’Connell Mahon Architects
Arigho Larmour Wheeler Architects
Donaghy + Dimond Architects
Lafferty Architects & Project Managers
Urban Agency
Architectural Farm
ION.ie Vectorworks BIM
McCullough Mulvin Architects
DMVF Architects
Grafton Architects
O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects
Eco Window Concepts
Aughey O’Flaherty Architects
GKMP Architects

The Architectural Association of Ireland is a non-profit voluntary organisation, founded in 1896, with the aim of promoting greater discussion, dissemination and engagement in architecture and the built environment.