Plenary Session Becoming Hyper-conscious

Becoming Hyper-conscious opens with a plenary session that explores spatial potentials from global and local political and ecological interplays, networks that usually escape human perception. Bringing together architectural practice, research, and theory, the session frames empowered consciousness as a medium of spatial investigation and action. The role of the Critical Antagonists in the plenary session is to articulate a critical understanding of Becoming Hyper-conscious —a vision that takes into account the fifteen sessions with over forty speakers, while focusing in particular on the two commissioned Research by Design investigations and the two Emerging Workshops.

Within this framework, Forensic Architecture will unpack the complex methods and spatial findings gathered from their research about the genocide in Gaza. Secondly Brandlhuber+ and HouseEurope! will present the potential of understanding law as a design tool, to activate social-ecological transformation of the built environment grounded on the right to housing. Emerging architects Ibiye Camp and Common Accounts will share the outcomes of their workshops: the former investigating colonial inscriptions and geopolitical flows emanating from the city of Barcelona, the latter reflecting on the power of urban parades, processions and rituals as pragmatic ephemeral architectures for enduring city transformation.
Together, this multiplicity of voices intends to provide diverse approaches into calling for deeper awareness —beyond data accumulation and critique— towards empowering active forms of care and transformation.