Theories of Architecture Fellowship Program

The Theories of Architecture Fellowship Program (ToAFP) is a research initiative of the Department of Architecture launched in 2020 that is interested in raising questions about architecture. It aims to create opportunity and curate platforms to foster the encounter of individuals and groups, to promote the exchange of ideas, perspectives, approaches, and methodologies that may contribute to ongoing debates and discussions surrounding ‘this thing called theory’. It engages architectural theory ‘in the plural’, and theory as multiplicity.

It acknowledges the interrelations that exist with the wider context, determined by the intricate landscapes of contemporary reality. It emphasizes the importance of transversality in the encounter of the theories of architecture and the discipline’s outside. It understands the theoretical, speculative impulse as constitutive of a constellation of varying positions and trajectories that move across an ever-expanding field, shaping the contours, or horizons, for a future architecture. It underlines the importance of taking stock of the existing repertoire of theories operative in architecture on any given moment in time; of rethinking and repositioning theoretical agencies; and of making concerted efforts to identify what these potentially afford, what kind of horizons they shape, what sort of worlds they make possible. The focus and its respective practices shift from an emphasis on the ontological (‘what is’) and the ontic (‘what there is’ and ‘what it does’), to an interest in the speculative (‘what there could be’, ‘what if’). The gamut of questions that ToAFP has generated and (partially) addressed since its launch in 2020 reflects these shifts, from initial concerns on the nature of the multiplicity of theories of architecture in their complexity and plurality, to the investment in the futurity of this multiplicity in the present version of the ToAFP.

The ToAFP looks beyond the limits of the research produced in the Architecture Department, and embrace the insights produced elsewhere in the field, thus helping to create conditions for the academic exchange of knowledge on the theoretical and practical dimensions of architecture between our own researchers, practitioner-designers, and students, and that of other young researchers, early career academics, and emerging thinkers, as well as established scholars independent or affiliated to other institutions, universities, and various organizations.

Over the next three academic years (2023-2026) the Architecture Department will sponsor the second edition of the ToAFP with the help of the curatorial committee formed by one representative of each of the five sections of the Architecture Department, one PhD cohort, one student assistant and one chairperson.

Visiting Fellows

2019-2022

• Nishat Awan (University of Sheffield)
• Ireneé Scalbert (University of Limmerick)
• Gökhan Kodalak (Pratt Institute)
• Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (Yale University)
• Naomi Stead (Monash University)
• David Leite Viana (Portucalense University)

2023-2026

• Shanti Surmatojo (Monash University)

The ongoing documentation of the first and second editions of the ToAFP is available upon request. To contact the ToAFP Curatorial Committee please contact Heidi Sohn or any of the committee members.