As part of Umeå School of Architecture's event series UMA Talks we welcome students, staff and the public to a lecture with María José Marcos-Torró, MAGICARCH to discuss about Architecture and Political Ecology.
Protocols of the ecology of practices, quoting Isabelle Stengers, are "a tool for thinking through what is happening" in the relation between Architecture and Political Ecology. Within this UMA Talks event, María José Marcos-Torró will introduce MAGICARCH Office projects and design strategies. Through these, several Eco-reflections from the scale of the city to the planetary scene will be discussed. Anthropocene push us to be more critical in the way we design cities and domesticity, and more significantly, the ways we live together with nature, towards a caring-nature. If the human is not in the main axis of the design, which are the new architecture ecosystems? Which protocols of interspecies design can allow us to live together within an invisible ecosystem?
About María José Marcos Torró:
María José Marcos-Torró is an architect and professor at the University of Alicante, Spain. She runs her own firm MAGICARCH Architecture Office. She exhibited her project 'Nexus8. The form of care' at the YEA! Young European Architects within the 2021 Bienale di Venezia, being awarded as one of the best 8 young European offices. She also exhibited 'Portable Architectures' in the Spanish Pavilion of the 17th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura della Biennale di Venezia 2021. She previously exhibited her project ‘Blooming Bath’, ‘Paradise Noudel’ and ‘ADN Santa Eulalia’ at the 16th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura della Biennale di Venezia 2018 and, as a student, she exhibited ‘Venezia. Intruzioni per l'uso‘ at the 8th Mostra Internazionale di Architettura della Biennale di Venezia 2002 at the Museo Correr in Piazza di San Marco. Maria Jose is linked to school of thought that envisions Architecture with new forms of co-existence with Ecology. Her practice is focused on this Ecology concern, designing affective spaces and reformulating parametric technology. María José Marcos has been a critic in international Architecture Awards, and she has written in 'DOMUS'. She has a strong Asian influence from the years she lived in Seoul, where she had her MAGICARCH Office headquarters. She has been a professor of Architectural Projects since 2008, for longer at Soongisl University in Seoul, at the University of Alicante and now also at the UNAB in Santiago de Chile. She was also teaching Architecture at the AA in London and the UIC Esarq in Barcelona.
About the event:
The event, held in English, will begin with a welcoming introduction by Cornelia Redeker, Head of Department and Professor at Umeå School of Architecture (UMA). After the lecture Maria Luna Nobile, Associate professor at UMA will initiate and moderate the roundtable conversation with María José Marcos-Torró, Roemer Van Toorn and the audience.
About UMA Talks
The UMA Talks are a free and accessible series of events. The series is devoted to advancing architectural discourse from both an international perspective and local perspective, and strives to enable the public, students, teachers, and researchers both within architecture and from other fields to get insight to and participate in the educational activities and academic research taking place at Umeå School of Architecture. Theorist, practitioners, artists, and other relevant guests are invited to speak or to participate in roundtable conversations or similar formats. Read more here.