KVI Open Lectures

Calais' refugee camp architecture/ By Liam-stoopdice, CC BY-SA 4.0.

KVI open lectures 2025–2026
Architecture and care-ethics, curator Ingrid Ruudi, in cooperation with the EKA faculty of Architecture 

The 2025/26 season of public lectures will examine architecture from the perspective of the ethics of care. How does architecture care for people’s physical, social and emotional needs, both today and from a historical perspective? While traditionally everything related to care has been considered issues of the private realm, in reality the question of who, how and to what extent is considered worthy of care and attention is one of the central agreements of a social organization. Architecture plays a very important role in this, both as a creator of specific spatial conditions and as a conditioner of unspoken attitudes and a formative force for social subjects. The starting point for many of the speakers in this lecture series is intersectional feminism – the desire to empower users who, due to their gender, sexuality, nationality, social background, age, or physical or mental characteristics, have not received full attention and support in standard architectural and planning practices. Topics covered will range from feminist urban criticism to the role of architects in the context of wars and refugee crises, from considering disabilities and neurodivergence in design practice to the spatial experience of queer and trans people.

Programme 2025/2026:

• 25.09  at 18:00 in A-101 Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) “Architecture and the Right to Care”
• 16.10 at 18:00 in A-101 Leslie Kern (Toronto) “Towars a feminist city” 
• 13.11 at 18:00 in A-101 Emma Cheatle (The University of Sheffield) “Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity”
• 27.11 at 18:00 in A-101 Robert Mull (Limerick and Harkiv) “The free world”
• 26.02 at 18:00 in A-101 Magda Mostafa (The American University in Cairo)
• 26.03 at 18:00 in A-101  Jos Boys (London)
• 9.04 at 18:00 in A-101 Katarina Bonnevier (Stockholm)
• 14.05 at 18:00 in A-101 Iulia Statica (The University of Sheffield)

Additional lectures:

• 29th September at 17.00 in cooperation with the Estonian doctoral school of humanities and arts in room A- 501 of EKA Maria Stavrinaki lecture„Art after History. The „Museum without walls“ as Model, 50s-70s“.
• 21st October at 18:00 in A-501 a lecture and discussion on the topic of the series in 2024/2025: Erica Lehrer, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Mariann Raisma “Decolonial Museology Re-centered: Thinking Theory and Practice through East-Central Europe”