Manipulated image from ArkDes collection
ArkDes Fellowship
Call for Fellows: the first ArkDes Fellowship (2018-2019) will be dedicated to Projecting the Future.
The ArkDes Fellowship offers practitioners, spatial thinkers, and researchers operating in or around the fields of architecture and design opportunities for interdisciplinary research at ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. The first annual Fellowship is dedicated to the theme of Projecting the Future, providing four Fellows space and resources to conduct exploratory work for a 6 month-long period (September 2018 to February 2019) in Stockholm.
With the headline exhibition The Future Starts Here opening in 2019, ArkDes will become a centre for future studies. Sweden is an important territory in which to consider future trends; while semi-peripheral, it maintains a global impact on models of social governance and the creative industries. With a General Election around the corner (September 2018), questions surrounding immigration, politics, militarisation, and housing are currently reframing a debate about society and its relationship to the built environment.
The word ‘project’ has its etymological root in the Latin word proicere, to “throw forth”. As disciplines and practices, architecture and design are inherently preoccupied by ideas of the future—a combination of tensions, imaginations, hopes and fears—often inspired by what has come before. Historically, it has represented a horizon upon which all problems might, could, and will be solved; an ideological belief based on the notion of unimpeded progress and the vision of a ”better” world. At a moment in which the ways in which we live, work, and postulate are shifting, we should take time to consider how we frame our understanding of the ‘future’ in time and as a place. We invite research proposals that challenge preconceived ideas behind these spheres of thought and operation, both in topic and in research methodology.
The application process does not require a stipulated or tangible outcome; we expect any possible result of the programme to develop during the Fellows’ time at ArkDes, and from conversation with our curators, researchers, and guests. We are excited by the unconventional, experimental, contextually rich, and culturally engaged; proposals that can concisely advocate for an original position while, at the same time, offer convincing methodologies for research, communication and dissemination.
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2018–2019 ArkDes Fellows
The inaugural ArkDes Call for Fellows, held between February and March 2018, attracted over 200 applications by practitioners, researchers, educators, artists and communicators. A total of six Fellows, selected by an international jury, will join ArkDes in September 2018.
While each application addressed the theme “Projecting the Future”, proposals covered a wide array of themes focused on future visions for tackling challenges in built and non-urban environments. An international jury comprising Behzad Khosravi Noori (Konstfack), Liza Fior (muf architecture and art), Maria Lind (Tensta Konsthall) and Nikolaus Hirsch (e-flux architecture) and chaired by ArkDes’ Director Kieran Long, collectively assessed proposals during a seminar at ArkDes in April 2018.
Karin Reisinger
Projecting Futures for Exploited Environments: Staying with the Pit (of Malmberget, Sweden)
Karin Reisinger teaches at Vienna University of Technology (Institute of Art and Design) and a seminar entitled Feminist Ecologies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Institute of Art and Architecture). She previously undertook a postdoctoral fellowship in Critical Studies in Architecture at the KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm (2016-2017). Karin was key in organising the conference “Architecture and Feminisms: Ecologies, Economies, Technologies” (2016). During previous time in Sweden, she has investigated memories of mining societies with methods of feminist political ecologies. Her work has resulted in book chapters including Abandoned Architectures in Architecture and Feminisms (2018), “Connective Oscillations” in More (forthc. 2018), alongside exhibitions and presentations.
Jury Citations: In her application, Karin touches upon many of the themes that can be read in the wider body of Fellowship proposals. She explores adaptation, ecologies of place, feminist-indigenous-non human perspectives, and the repercussions of intensified extraction on the built and non-urban environment and social landscapes. Her work does this in both a broader macro context and at a micro scale; her project is geographically located in Malmberget, Sweden. The proposal is precise in addressing urgent issues for the future.
Sandi Hilal
Al-Madhafah: The Living Room
Sandi Hilal, born in Bethlehem, Palestine, is based in Stockholm. Together with Alessandro Petti, Sandi has developed a research project based on artistic practice that is both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. In their practice, contemporary art exhibitions are concurrently a site of display, material production, research, and political imagination. The pair have participated in various international exhibitions, among them the Biennale di Venezia (2003-2008-2009-2013-2015), the Istanbul Design Biennial (2009), Home Works Beirut (2010), the Bienal de São Paulo (2014), the Asian Art Biennial (2015), the Marrakesh Biennial (2016), Qalandia International (2016), alongside others.
Jury Citations: Sandi Hilal’s project provides a forceful engagement with theory and practice, relating to the role of guest and host. It is instrumental in stretching beyond the study of migratory experience by following the stories of what happens to people once they cross borders, using Boden, Sweden, as a case study. The proposal has the potential to be transformative and enriching for ArkDes, allowing for new intersections of different stakeholders, activated by hospitality.
Sara Brolund de Carvalho/ Action Archive
Utopia in Action: Co-Housing in the Future?
Sara Brolund de Carvalho is an artist, filmmaker, architect and educator based in Stockholm. She is currently the project leader for Grannskapskontoret (the neighbourhood office), a one year “youth shop” in Hökarängen, Stockholm, focusing on local civic engagement and urban planning. Since 2013 she has been leading the research group “Action Archive”, together with researchers at the School of Architecture). They have developed participatory historical records through public actions that bring together diverse actors and a public around urban cultural, historical, and political issues by employing experimental research formats such as witness seminars, walks, films, re-enactments, and collective time-space mappings.
Jury Citations: Sara Brolund de Carvalho’s proposal with Action Archive, a non-profit association dedicated to urban research through approaches of oral history and participatory historiography, provides a queer feminist perspective on future co-housing, and a dynamic approach to archiving and design to activate archives.
3°09 Collective: Alisha Morenike Fisher, Saphia Al-Haboubi, Andreea Samoila
Biomimicry design: The future of migration
Alisha Morenike Fisher is a British born Nigerian urban researcher and junior landscape architect based in London. She is intrigued by identity politics within the built environment. As a result of urban fabrics, issues of displacement, mobility and inequality, she set up her first solo-funded research project “African Cities” in 2016. She has worked in architecture studios in both Johannesburg and London, and is a recipient of the 2017 Humberside Society of Architecture prize for her graduate degree in architecture.
Saphia Al-Haboubi is a British born architectural assistant, with heritage in Iraq. She is interested in the ways in which people interact with architecture, and especially in inter-city environments and global-scale urban migration. Her projects attempt to tackle socio-political challenges and ways in which improvements can be brought into everyday lives through the built environment. Her work often considers the overarching effect that people have on the wider environment, and she is primarily interested in designing in an ethical and sustainable way.
Andreea Samoila is a Romanian architecture student based in Newcastle-Upon Tyne. She is a committee member of Northumbria’s Architecture Society, and has co-curated lecture series and a student build project that will be realised in summer 2018. Her interests lie in temporary/interactive architecture, product design, and urbanism, and how they can have a social impact. Her work is also focused on creative writing, readings on film theory, script writing, and philosophy. Her interests lie in how palimpsests, adaptations, and cross-disciplinary projects can inform better designs that accommodate climate change.
Jury Citations: Alisha Morenike Fisher, Saphia Al-Haboubi, and Andreea Samoila of the collective 3°09 are an emerging, ambitious group finding clarity as facilitators of social change and the built environment. Their proposal for the ArkDes Fellowship addresses global planetary and political concerns, surrounding present and future climate and migration challenges and solutions – but is also embedded within a Swedish context.
About ArkDes research
In accordance with the Swedish government’s new policy for designed living environments (Politik för gestaltad livsmiljö (Prop. 2017/18:110)), ArkDes has been assigned the task to strengthen knowledge on, and promote interest in, architecture, form and design values and significance for both individuals and social development at large (s 26). In order to work with this new task, ArkDes has received additional funding for research to increase knowledge on how architecture and planning impact people and society. Opening within the new research program is the opportunity for four guest researchers (Fellows) to spend six months at ArkDes as part of an annual ArkDes Fellowship. The aim is to broaden discussion and collaboration in building new knowledge on how architecture and design can contribute to finding solutions for complex urban and societal challenges.
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Nikolaus Hirsch, Liza Fior, Behzad Khosravi Noori och Maria Lind. Porträtt: Bernd Krauss
Jury
A jury chaired by Kieran Long will make the final decision on applications. This body of internationally acclaimed practitioners, educators, curators and researchers will collectively assess proposals during a seminar at ArkDes.
Nikolaus Hirsch is a Frankfurt-based architect, editor and curator. He was the director of Städelschule and Portikus in Frankfurt and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York. His realised projects include the Dresden Synagogue (2001), Hinzert Document Center (2006), Cybermohalla Hub (Delhi, 2008-12), Do We Dream Under The Same Sky (with Rirkrit Tiravanija), Museum of Immortality (Mexico City, 2016) and, currently, the conversion of the National Gallery in Prague. Hirsch curated numerous exhibitions at the Portikus, the Folly project for the Gwangju Biennale (2014), Real DMZ (2015), and “Wohnungsfrage” at HKW Berlin (2015). Hirsch is the co-founder and editor of the Critical Spatial Practice series at Sternberg Press and e-flux Architecture.
Liza Fior is a partner of muf architecture/art, a London-based practice working in the public realm (including museums). The practice brings unsolicited research into every project, working with those who know a place in order to articulate the value of the existing before moving onto discussions of the future. muf work primarily in East London, but not exclusively so. They are the only UK winners of the European Prize for Public Space (for Barking Town Square), and were the authors of the British Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale. Liza has taught, lectured and been published internationally.
Behzad Khosravi Noori is an artist, writer and educator based in Stockholm. He has lectured widely and led theory and practice seminars about comparative art history (with a focus on microhistory), Islamicate, as well as research based art practices. His work has been shown in various national and international exhibitions including Tensta Konsthall, Botkyrka Konsthall, MKC in Stockholm, Sakakini, Ramallah Palestine, the Arran Gallery Tehran, and the research pavilion at 2017 Venice Art Biennale. He is currently a PhD candidate at Konstfack’s Fine Art department in collaboration with the Department of Architecture at KTH Stockholm.
Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator based in Stockholm, and is currently the director of Tensta konsthall. She was the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010), and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). Between 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein and in 1998, co-curator of Manifesta 2. Lind has taught widely since the early 1990s and is currently professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. In 2009 Lind was the recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In 2010 Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press.
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Practical Information
Fellows will have full access to resources within ArkDes, including the library, collection, workspaces, and members of the curatorial and research departments
A monthly salary of around SEK 25,000 (after taxation) will be made available to successful applicants, along with round-trip travel from their country of residence. Fellows will be responsible for finding their own accommodation in Stockholm.
- You must be available to spend the majority of the Fellowship period in Stockholm.
- High competence in English is essential. While it will not affect the decision of the jury, knowledge of Swedish would be an advantage in engaging with some of the material in our library and collection.
- We do not request a CV, letters of recommendation, academic certification, or a portfolio of work
- Submissions are welcome from citizens of the European Union who have right to reside in Sweden for a period 6 months, the minimum duration of a Fellowship, beginning on or around September 1, 2018. At this time we are unable to support visa applications
- Applicants may apply as individuals, partnerships or groups. In the case of partnership or group applications, one monthly payment of around 25,000 SEK (after taxation) will be made to one member of the partnership or group
- There is no age limit for applicants
Successful applicants will begin their Fellowship on or around September 1, 2018. The first Fellowship period will formally end in February 2019.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Responses to commonly asked questions received prior to February 23, 2018. You may still direct questions to the Fellowships team up to and including March 18, 2018.
Eligibility: During this first Fellowship period (2018-2019) the programme is only open to applicants who are citizens of the European Union (including those of the United Kingdom). We intend to open the Fellowship programme to both EU and non-EU applicants in the second Fellowship period (2019-2020) and beyond.
The Fellowship is open to applicants from any field, profession, or discipline. We do not request academic certification or formal references during the application process. All applications must be aligned with the broad theme of the Open Call and the practical guidelines outlined on this page. Individuals within companies are able to apply independently.
Can partnerships or groups apply?
Group applications may contain a maximum of four persons. A partnership application will consist of two persons. Each person participating in a group or partnership application must contribute a separate 250-word biography.
We are open to inventive forms of group participation. Please clearly articulate any intended form of group/partnership arrangement in your application as part of Research Methodology.
Do I/we have to be in Stockholm?
We expect Fellows to spend the majority of their time in Stockholm. Shared working space in ArkDes will be available for all Fellows in order to facilitate close interaction and collaboration with our curators and researchers.
If other types of spaces are required for research and/or production, ArkDes will be able to assist in finding possible partnerships in Stockholm. There is no requirement to outline this ambition in your application.
What is financially covered by the programme?
Discussions about divisions and procedure of payments will be discussed and negotiated with each individual or partnership/group independently. ArkDes will cover round-trip travel from the Fellow’s country of residence and will be able to provide a modest production budget. Fellows will be responsible for finding their own accommodation in Stockholm.
Should applications be directly relevant to Sweden?
Proposals do not have to directly relate to Stockholm or Sweden but should ideally address large-scale themes relevant to this territory.
What could the output of the programme be?
We do not ask for a stipulated outcome or output in applications. How research might be presented or communicated will be discussed independently, dependent on the project.
You can direct further questions related to the Open Call to fellowships@arkdes.se before March 18, 2018.