Looking Outwards 8

For this week’s LO, I decided to look into Eva Franch, who was the first female director of the renown Architectural Association School of Architecture up until a handful of months ago when she was controversially fired. Eva, who presented at Eyeo 2015, is from Catalonia and studied architecture there for a handful of years before she went on to teach at multiple American universities while founding her own practice, named Office of Architectural Affairs.

Franch’s work has addressed architecture within the context of technology and social, political, and economical issues, with her work aiming to provoke and project ideas about architecture’s standing in the current day and the future. She believes architecture has the responsibility and ability to articulate these fields, and aims to redefine the limits of architecture as a profession and role in society.

Her presentation methods, which vary from digital forms to collections of written articles, often contrast pros and cons of a given urban area she is studying, and re-emphasize architecture’s cyclical relationship between the social, political, and economic issues that can surround a city. She does not lose focus of reality, yet presents ideas and solutions that can be controversial and often viewed as utopic, as they push the boundary of what is defined as architecture.