Dr Harriet Harriss has been invited to present the Valedictory Lecture for Part 3 Architecture (ARB/RIBA).
About
The Valedictory lecture traditionally closes the summer term of the Part 3 Architecture (ARB/RIBA) programme and is delivered by a guest speaker on a topic of their choice, relating to current societal, architectural or professional themes.
This year the Professional Studies team have invited Dr Harriss to discuss her views on architecture at the point of final qualification and more generally the discussions within the profession.
Abstract
It is tolerated and even celebrated that architecture lacks both a diversity of membership and a diversity of outcomes. Not only does architecture remain unrepresentative of the society it seeks to serve but it assumes that a new building is the ‘solution’ to almost any social or spatial problem, despite the imperative for change offered by imminent ecological collapse. ‘Architects After Architecture’s Anthropocene’ offers an alternative way of thinking about how the epistemological richness of an architecture degree provides graduates with the versatility, tools, and tactics needed to not only transform other industries, but to reframe architecture’s remit, responsibilities, and real-world impact, too.
Biography
Dr Harriet Harriss is an architect, writer, historian and Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture in New York. Prior to this, she led the Architecture Research Program at the Royal College of Art in London until 2015 and the Masters in Architecture Programme at Oxford Brookes from 2009 – 2015. Her work focuses on pioneering new models of design education and pedagogies exploring gender imbalance in architecture education and confronts themes such as feminism; equity, decolonisation, diversity and inclusion; civic engagement; and climate justice with publications including Radical Pedagaogies and A Gendered Profession.
