Architecture of Calais Jungle Camp. By Liam-stoopdice, CC BY-SA 4.0
The 2025/2026 academic year open lecture series will be held in collaboration with the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and the Faculty of Architecture. The theme of this academic year is “Architecture and the Ethics of Care” and the lectures will be curated by KVI Senior Researcher Dr. Ingrid Ruudi.
Architecture will be addressed from the perspective of the ethics of care: how does architecture take care of people’s physical, emotional and social needs, both today and in a historical perspective?
Ingrid Ruudi opens the topic: “While traditionally everything related to care has been preferred to be viewed as belonging to the private sphere, in fact the question of who, in what way and to what extent is considered worthy of care and nurturing is one of the central agreements of social organization. Architecture plays a very important role in this, both as a creator of specific spatial conditions and as a shaper of unspoken attitudes and a shaper of social subjects.
The starting point of many of the speakers in the lecture series is intersectional feminism – the desire to empower space 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 practice. The topics to be discussed range from feminist urban space criticism to the role of the architect in the context of wars and the refugee crisis, from taking into account physical special needs and neurodiversity in design to the spatial experience of queer and trans people.”
The first lecture “Architecture and the Right to Care” will be given on September 25 by Elke Krasny at EKA main hall (A-101).
Elke Krasny is an architectural and cultural theorist, urban researcher and curator, professor at the Vienna Academy of Arts and a visiting professor at the Vienna University of Technology. Her research focuses on ecological and social justice issues in the Anthropocene and against the backdrop of global crises, and the understanding of care in the context of architecture, urbanism and contemporary art.
All students and lecturers of the Estonian Academy of Arts and other schools and universities, cultural workers and architectural practitioners are welcome to attend the lectures.
The lectures will take place on Thursdays at 6:00 PM in the EKA auditorium. The lectures are free of charge and will be held in English.
Lecture schedule 2025/2026:
2025
- Sept 25 Elke Krasny (Vienna Academy of Arts) “Architecture and the Right to Care”
- Oct 16 Leslie Kern (Toronto)
- Nov 13 Emma Cheatle (University of Sheffield)
- Nov 27 Robert Mull (London)
2026
- Feb 26 Magda Mostafa (American University in Cairo)
- March 26 Jos Boys (London)
- April 9 Katarina Bonnevier (Stockholm)
- May 14 Iulia Statica (University of Sheffield)
Previous open architecture lectures can be viewed at www.avatudloengud.ee
The lectures are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Erasmus +
The lecture series is part of the grant project Care Rooms in Late and Post-Socialist Estonia (PSG1078) supported by the Estonian Science Foundation.