Discussion around P. Viganò The Biopolitical Garden, published by actar

Paola Viganò

Paola Viganò architect and urbanist, is Full Professor in Urban Theory and Urban Design at the EPFL (CH) (where she directs the Habitat Research Center and the Lab-U) and at IUAV Venice (IT). After a long reflection on architecture and urbanism through all scales, Viganò reopens the debate on the role of architecture, urbanism, landscape design in the frame of a larger biopolitical project that concerns living entities and bodies within space, and new ways of co-existence.

Viganò received the Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme in 2013, the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the UCLouvain in 2016, the Flemish Culture Award for Architecture in 2017, and the Golden medal to the career of Milano Triennale in 2018. In 2022, she receives the Schelling Prize for Architectural Theory. Viganò co-founded Studio in 1990 with Bernardo Secchi, working on projects across Europe. Since 2015, StudioPaolaViganò has focused on ecological and social transitions in cities and territories, including projects as the Dessel Nuclear Research Center park in Belgium and the Marie Janson Plein in Brussels with VVV. Studio has recently won and completed the Lugano municipal plan in Switzerland, is consultant of the Geneva’s municipal plan, and coordinated the Vesdre Valley recovery scheme in Wallonia (with ULiège) after the 2021 flooding. The work has been exhibited at the Shenzen Biennale in 2019 and the Venice Biennale in 2021.

Viganò’s recent publications include The Biopolitical Garden, ‘Life as a Common: Space for a New Biopolitical Project’ (2022), The Horizontal Metropolis. A Radical Project, with Chiara Cavalieri (2019), Territories of Urbanism (2016).

Greet De Block

Greet De Block is an associate research professor at the University of Antwerp. Within her broad reflection on urbanism, her resent works mirror current resilient design with earlier socio-spatial schemes dealing with uncertainty and risk in a context of rapid urban transformations, which can bring a critical point of view on the question of co-existence. Her writing and teaching focus on infrastructure as driving force of urbanization, advancing an interdisciplinary approach linking urbanism with urban history, Science Technology and Society studies (STS), political geography, and landscape studies.

De Block is trained as an engineer-architect and urban planner. In 2011 she obtained her PhD, summa cum laude (KU Leuven) tracing the spatial schemes inscribed in network design. During her postdoc (FWO), she invested in teaching and internationalization by research collaborations with, and lecturing and research stays at, Harvard University, University of New Hampshire, TU Eindhoven and Rijkswaterstaat. In 2015, she started at the University of Antwerp (UA), as hub between the Centre for Urban History (CSG) and the Urban Studies Institute (USI).

Viviana d'Auria

Viviana d’Auria is an architect, urbanist, and associate professor in international urbanism at the Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium, and the head of Urban Design, Urbanism, Landscape and Planning. Through her work she explores the epistemological contribution of development aid to the discipline of urbanism, within a more general interest in the transcultural construction of cities and their contested spaces. Her recent contributions to the fields of housing for refugee inclusion, the right to housing, the transformation of social housing, and the intricate interplay between migration, borders, and landscape, hold profound relevance within the context of discussions about coexistence.

Viviana is trained as an architect and urbanist (Roma Tre University (Italy)) and earned a Master of Human Settlements and her PhD at KU Leuven (Belgium). With her post-doc (NWO) at the University of Amsterdam as a trigger, she is committed to building trans-disciplinary research and education networks, foregrounding partnerships with universities in the so-called “global South” such as the University of Guayaquil and Universidad Politecnica Salesiana, Ecuador; University of Witwatersrand, South Africa; Birzeit University, Palestine) and CSOs like Architects without Borders-UK, Refugees Welcome Italy, etc.