Displaying Emergency: A Situated Curatorial/Spatial Architecture
A lecture by Olga Subiros
Harvard Graduate School of Design
@harvardgsd
Date: 3/26/2026
Time: 4 PM
Location: 42 Kirkland, 1G
In this lecture, architect, curator, and researcher Olga Subirós presents Displaying Emergency, a practice-based body of work that understands architecture as a curatorial/spatial practice capable of transforming institutions from within and engaging publics in times of ecological and social emergency. Drawing on her projects such as Air/Aria/Aire (Catalan Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021) and Matter Matters. Designing with the World, currently on view at the Museu del Disseny-DHub Barcelona, Subirós will discuss how exhibitions can operate as temporary institutions: producing situated evidence, reframing dominant narratives, reorganizing spatial and institutional protocols, and activating new forms of collective awareness. Bringing together architecture, exhibition-making, research, and public engagement, the lecture reflects how curatorial/spatial practice can contribute to cultural institutions respond more critically and imaginatively to interconnected crises while engaging visitors in new ways.
This lecture is part of the MDes Open Project Forms of Assembly: All Things Considered, taught by
@malkit_shoshan . At the intersection of art, design, activism, theory, and practice, the course experiments with various forms of assembly to imagine alternative futures and a world otherwise. Drawing on ideas from Judith Butler, Bruno Latour, and Lola Olufemi, it examines expanded notions of assembly including the invisible, unthinkable, and unrepresentable, as well as nonhuman entities, objects, and semi-objects, to address urgent challenges such as the climate crisis, mass migration, and socio-economic, political, and cultural divides. These and other related issues that affect our daily lives and shared environments across a variety of scales and temporalities.
The course includes a guest lecture series featuring Anna Puigjaner (MAIO), Elke Krasny, Emanuele Coccia, Ethel Baraona-Pohl (DPR-Barcelona), Gabriel Kozlowski, Olga Subiros, and Tatiana Bilbao.