11 episodes

Cultures of Assembly (CoA) is a long-term research initiative and podcast series run by the Chair of the City of Esch at the University of Luxembourg. CoA is a project for discussing and speculating on spaces of agonism and democracies in the making, it runs in parallel with a new neighbourhood agency in the city centre of Esch-sur-Alzette. CoA aims to generate productive dialogues between urban pasts, presents, and futures, and the various publics and individuals who claim and produce them.
We are
Markus Miessen, Marija Maric, César Reyes Nájera, Francelle Cane

Cultures of Assembly Master in Architecture. University of Luxembourg

    • Science

Cultures of Assembly (CoA) is a long-term research initiative and podcast series run by the Chair of the City of Esch at the University of Luxembourg. CoA is a project for discussing and speculating on spaces of agonism and democracies in the making, it runs in parallel with a new neighbourhood agency in the city centre of Esch-sur-Alzette. CoA aims to generate productive dialogues between urban pasts, presents, and futures, and the various publics and individuals who claim and produce them.
We are
Markus Miessen, Marija Maric, César Reyes Nájera, Francelle Cane

    CoA 011. On Assemblies and Propaganda with Jonas Staal.

    CoA 011. On Assemblies and Propaganda with Jonas Staal.

    Jonas Staal shares experiences on assemblies and internationalism contesting imperialist propaganda.

    Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing), and with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (2020-ongoing). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union.



    Portrait of Jonas Staal, © Ruben Hamelink

    • 1 hr 11 min
    CoA 10. On Architecture and Politics with Oana Bogdan and Olaf Grawert.

    CoA 10. On Architecture and Politics with Oana Bogdan and Olaf Grawert.

    Oana Bogdan and Olaf Grawert discuss about the possible ways of political commitment in architecture. They share ideas and professional experiences confronting the rhetoric of conventional politics that keep citizens away from the debate and from the design and construction of the city.

    Oana Bogdan is a Belgium-Romanian architect. She founded the architectural firm Bogdan & Van Broeck, now reconfigured as &Bogdan which stands for cooperation. Her problem-solving mentality and cooperative ethos questions the architect’s traditional role, believing that the profession’s skills can be used to navigate the complexity of many areas of life. She took the role of Secretary of State for cultural heritage in the Romanian Government which assumed leadership of the country in 2016. In 2021 she was appointed Chairwoman of the ‘Good Living’ Expert Committee in charge of the reform of Brussels Region’s building code.

    Olaf Grawert works as a partner at the collaborative architecture practice bplus.xyz (Berlin), as a lecturer at station.plus (Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich) and in spring as an Adjunct Professor at the Politecnico in Milan. In 2021, he was co-curator of 2038 - The New Serenity, the German Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice. As part of HouseEurope! a non-profit organization, he is currently co-organizing an European Citizens' Initiative aimed at boosting the renovation of existing buildings, to stop their demolition driven by speculation. bplus.xyz is known for its adaptive reuse projects of building ruins and industrial facilities that have fallen out of use.

    • 1 hr 42 min
    CoA 9. On Deliberation with Claudia Chwalisz

    CoA 9. On Deliberation with Claudia Chwalisz

    Claudia Chwalisz talks about deliberation, new democratic models, and commitment as a form of participation.

    Claudia Chwalisz is the Founder and CEO of DemocracyNext. Prior to that, Claudia served as the Innovative Citizen Participation Lead at the OECD, where she established and analysed around 600 examples of deliberative assemblies around the world, co-authored the "Catching the Deliberative Wave" report, and set standards for implementation and institutionalisation. She was involved in designing the world’s first permanent deliberative bodies made up of people drawn by a lottery in Ostbelgien, Paris, and Brussels. Claudia is an Obama Leader Europe 2023.

    • 1 hr 5 min
    CoA 8. Institutional Governance with Giovanna Borasi

    CoA 8. Institutional Governance with Giovanna Borasi

    Giovanna Borasi talks about the agency of architecture culture institutions, contemporary social concerns, scales, and the public.



    Giovanna Borasi is an architect, editor, and curator. She has been Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) since January 2020. Borasi’s work explores alternative ways of practicing and evaluating architecture, considering the impact of contemporary environmental, political, and social issues on the construction of the built environment.



    Portrait: © Richmond Lam

    • 1 hr 11 min
    CoA 7. Medium Design with Keller Easterling

    CoA 7. Medium Design with Keller Easterling

    Keller Easterling talks about the medium of action for design, its interplays, and how to exploit problems instead of trying to fix them.

    Keller Easterling is a designer, writer and the Enid Storm Dwyer Professor of Architecture at Yale. Her books include, Medium Design (Verso 2021), Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), Subtraction (Sternberg, 2014), Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999). Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934-1960. Easterling lectures and exhibits internationally. Her research and writing was included in the 2014 and 2018 Venice Biennales. Easterling is a 2019 United States Artist in Architecture and Design. 

    © Portrait: Strelka

    • 51 min
    CoA 6. Urban Conflicts with Gabu Heindl

    CoA 6. Urban Conflicts with Gabu Heindl

    Gabu Heindl talks about activist practices, radical democracy, spatial policies, and the political dimension of planning.

    Gabu Heindl  is an architect, urbanist and activist; her Vienna based practice GABU Heindl Architektur focuses on public space, collective housing and urban justice. Gabu Heindl holds a postgraduate masters in Architecture and Urbanism from Princeton University and wrote her PhD on radical democracy in architecture and urban planning at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 2018-2021 Gabu Heindl was Visiting Professor at Sheffield University, and since 2019 she co-runs a Diploma Unit at the AA in London. Since 2022 she is Professor and Chair of Building Economy and Project Development at the University Kassel where she is building up the teaching & research platform ARCHITECTURE CITIES ECONOMIES on design and political economy.

    • 1 hr 12 min

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