• Thursday 8th February 2018, 6.30pm
• Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

Reacting to contemporary displacement patterns, ‘Scavengers and Other Creatures in Promised Lands’ is a provocative architectural exploration of how radical cultural practices and time-based spaces enable a new set of architectural responses. For the last ten years Ricardo de Ostos and Nannette Jackowski have led a research studio at the AA School in London in pursuit of this question through cities, forests and wastelands. Illustrating their approach, the lecture will present ten years of their academic research with an in-depth view on how storytelling, collapsing environments and innovation in design shape an innovative understanding of the built environment. With a photographic documentation of unique places on Planet Earth, ‘Scavengers and Other Creatures in Promised Lands’ explores the gripping power of myth and fiction as radical narratives for imagining the near future of cities and forests.

Ricardo de Ostos creates speculative fictions that envision architectural projects in shifting environmental and cultural contexts. He lives, works and teaches in London, at both the Architectural Association and The Bartlett School of Architecture. He is the co-director of NaJa & deOstos studio and co-author of ‘The Hanging Cemetery of Baghdad’ (Springer Wien/New York, 2006), ‘Ambiguous Spaces’ (Princeton Press, 2007) and ‘Scavengers and Other Creatures in Promised Lands’ (2017, AA).

Image: Phantom Creatures, NaJa & deOstos