Archipelago: Architectures for the Multiverse

Meriem Chabani acted as moderator for a series of conversations during the event.

Organised by the HEAD – Geneva and HEPIA, Archipelago: Architectures for the Multiverse is the first edition of an international event with a local and digital focus, arising from a partnership between the departments of architecture, interior architecture, and landscape architecture.

Structured over three days, Archipelago posed a series of questions to conceptualise concrete avenues. The program began with an overview of the current state of architectural, interior, and landscape practices, before identifying emerging and newly visible trends, and concluded with an examination of methods and models, as well as modes of dissemination. These conversations were framed and broadcast from Le Cube and presented in a specially designed scenography for the occasion, in the form of an archipelago of rooms with varying capacities, connected and interlinked by the activities of participants, both online and in-person.

Archipelago provided a time for free research, gathering participants around questions inherent—or not—to contemporary architectural discourses, in order to explore the field of possibilities, particularly for teaching and research within schools. The event presented an approach based on “archipelagic thinking” in response to the dominance of European modes of investigation.

(Source: HEAD – Geneva website)

Photography: Alicia Dubuis, Michel Giesbrecht