03/02/18

AMES, Iowa — Architect Alejandra Navarrete Llopis, principal of New York City-based Nami Studio, will speak about access in housing, education and social environments and propose alternative models of inclusion in a lecture at Iowa State University.

Navarrete Llopis will present “This is Not Your Door: Spaces of Exclusion in New York — The Lottery, the Membership and the Application” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in Kocimski Auditorium, room 101 College of Design.

Navarrete Llopis will explore the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at three different scales in New York City: the domestic spaces of mixed-income developments resulting from inclusionary housing programs; the leisure interiors of social clubs offering privacy, security and comfort; and the educational settings of colleges and universities responding to contemporary discussions on fair admission, minorities and diversity.

In her lecture, Navarrete Llopis will map the connection between the transformation of the urban landscape, the admission to these interior environments and the design of new communities, articulated through the legal documents of the lottery (in the case of the affordable domestic interiors), the membership (social clubs) and the application (universities).

“These regulations and documents granting access shape the daily life spaces of New York, designing economic, class, gender, age and race differences,” she said. “The aim is not only to unveil the relationship between the legal frames and the places we inhabit but also to envision alternative models of inclusion and accessibility.”

About the speaker

Navarrete Llopis is a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute and the principal of Nami Studio, an architecture design and curatorial office working on public and private projects in Europe and in the US, including the exhibition design for the Iberoamerican Art Museum of Alcalá de Henares University. Her work has been funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Foundation and by European institutions.

With the After Belonging Agency, Navarrete Llopis was chief curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016. Previously, she co-founded PKMN, an award-winning research-based architects’ collective. She has also collaborated with design offices such as Solid Arquitectura, receiving honors including first prize for the Performing Arts Center International Competition in Seoul and for the “Aguila-Alcatel” Apartment Building in Madrid, exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Navarrete Llopis was trained at the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) and University of Architecture of Venice (IUAV) and received a master’s in advanced architectural design from Columbia University.

Her visit is part of the ISU Department of Architecture 2017-2018 Public Programs Series, “For Other Architectures.”

Contacts

Ross Adams, Architecture Public Programs Committee, (515) 294-8336, readams@iastate.edu
Heather Sauer, Design Communications, (515) 294-9289, hsauer@iastate.edu

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