ASSC is pleased to announce its new Spring 2021 Programme of events, with talks on estate demolitions, postwar redevelopment, the epistemology of modern design, and pandemic spaces past and present.

In our first event this year, Nicholas Thoburn will discuss his three-year research project about the architecture, lived experience, and demolition of east London’s Robin Hood Gardens estate, on Thursday 4 March, 6pm.

Otto Saumarez Smith (University of Warwick) will be talking about his recent book Boom Cities on Thursday 11 March, 6pm.

Following that, our ‘Thinker in Architecture’ for the year will be Zeynep Celik Alexander (Columbia), speaking on Friday 7 May, 6pm.

As part of Birkbeck’s Artsweek, we’ll be hosting a workshop on 20 May about Pandemic Spaces, run by Birkbeck’s Leslie Topp and our new Honorary Research Associate, Miloš Kosec. 

Our Spring Programme closes with Robert Bork (University of Iowa) exploring the fate of the late Gothic tradition on 28 May, 6pm.

And at the beginning of the summer, on 7 June, Professor Leslie Topp will deliver her Inaugural Lecture entitled ‘The Spaces We Are Reduced To‘, exploring what the pandemic has taught her about the phenomenon of spatial reduction in nineteenth-century carceral institutions.