Professor Cristina Cerulli Inaugural Lecture – Practising alternatives through architecture

How does architectural practice sit within the context of the multiple crises that we live in today? How can we facilitate the transition to a more just society? How can we rethink systems towards fairer outcomes? How could an expanded field of architecture contribute to create the change needed? What strategies can we deploy to create a shift towards fairer ways of producing and inhabiting our cities?

Reflecting on work intersecting architecture practice, pedagogy and research, this professorial lecture will put forward loose strategies for an ‘architecture of concern’ centred on collective endeavours as spaces of resistance, and on how we might imagine and implement alternatives.

Cristina’s bio

Cristina qualified as an architect in Florence, Italy. After an MSc in Computer Aided Building Design in (Strathclyde) and a PhD in Architecture (Sheffield), she has been working across practice and academia in Sheffield and London.

Cristina’s work focuses on supporting collective endeavours in the city and countering inequality through practices of care, actively proposing and implementing alternatives.

Cristina has obtained research funding from RCUK (EPSRC, AHRC), the British Academy, the EU and the UK Department of Health. She has published and presented her work in academic journals, parliamentary launches, public events, and exhibitions. Cristina is a co-recipient of a RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding Practice-located Research (2012) and was a member of the RIBA Commission for Ethics and Sustainable Development (2018). With Studio Polpo, the research-led social enterprise architecture practice that she co-founded, she contributed to the British Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 with the installation ‘High Street of Exchanges’ about the British High Street.

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Event Schedule:

18:00 Arrival

18:30 Professorial Lecture and Q&A

19:30 Drinks reception

20:00 Event close

Part of the SHU Professorial Lecture Series collection