Program

Past / Present / Upcoming / Press

Program Assembly
Friday–Sunday, 19–21 September, 2025
See full program on Instagram

Friday 19.09.25
On How to Bend Space
11am – Panel I

Unmasking Space
Introduction

Associazione Poveglia per Tutti
Introduction

Assemblea Permanente per la Palestina Libera
Studying at the Time of a Genocide

-----------------------------------------

Friday 19.09.25

2pm

Akshar Gajjar

Workshop

-----------------------------------------

Friday 19.09.25
4.30pm –– Panel II

Akshar Gajjar
Woven Voices

Sean Yuxiang Li
On Queering as Method

soft resistance collective
homemaking in d·i·s·p·l·a·c·e·m·e·a·n·t

-----------------------------------------

Saturday 20.09.25
Space is Political
1pm – Panel I

Shriya Chaudhry, Martin Kohlberger
Politics of Interim Uses in Zurich

OCIO Osservatorio CIvicO sulla casa e la residenzialità
Tracing the Housing Crisis in Venice

-----------------------------------------

Saturday 20.09.25

2.30pm Panel II

Rami Msallam
Sensing Fire Ecologies

Nathalie Marj
Protocols for Beirut’s Unbuildable Lots: Designing Non-sectarian Spaces

Laurene Cen and Selin Doğaner
Border Stories

-----------------------------------------

Saturday 20.09.25
4.30pm –– Panel III

Sean Vegezzi
Towards an Archive: Vernon C. Bain
Correction Center (VCBC)

Rémi Madrona
Bitter Bites of Swiss Coloniality

Deepthi Puthenpurackal
Swiss Coloniality:
the Basel Mission in Kerala

-----------------------------------------

Saturday 20.09.25
6.30pm

Exhibition Opening, Book Launch
Unmasking Space:
a handbook for student activism

Aperitivo

7pm

-----------------------------------------

Sunday 21.09.25
Heading Out
10.30am – Walk with OCIO

OCIO Osservatorio CIvicO sulla casa e la residenzialità

C.U.R.A. Sant’Elena
Camminata Urbana di Riappropriazione dell’Abitare

----------------------------------------

Sunday 21.09.25

11.30am Breakfast

Unmasking Space with Noemi Biasetton
Concluding Discussion

-----------------------------------------

Participants / Contributors
Assemblea Permanente was formed by the IUAV community in the spring of 2024, living in and caring for the Tolentini spaces in a horizontal and non-violent manner. A response to the position and methods adopted by the M4gn1f1c3nt R3ctOr and the IUAV administration with regard to the Palestinian genocide, it was born to counter the repression of dissent within our university and to build a space for critical discussion and collective liberation.

Akshar Gajjar, architect and PhD researcher at EPFL, studied at CEPT University and ETH. His research transects architectural material production, ecology, labor and territorial change. He is the author of Living together: More-than-Human Ecologies for Architectural Thinking (2025). In his textile-based art practice, he uses regional embroidery to explore identity, sexuality and ecology.

Sean Yuxiang Li is a Copenhagen-based architect, artist, and researcher contaminating informal architecture, alternative urban histories, and androgynous spatiality. Their work rethinks inherited urban landscapes and the politics of spatial intelligibility, bridging critical scholarship with hands-on NGO and volunteer engagement —Architecture disobeys.

soft resistance collective works at the intersection of art and architecture. Through collective drawing, writing, filmmaking, and space-making, they frame the daily acts of displaced queer bodies as conscious homemaking strategies. For them, softness and queerness are political means to envision alternatives to the normative home.

Shriya Chaudhry is an activist and architect, having completed their master’s degree in architecture at ETH Zurich. One of the co-founders of Unmasking Space, they work as a landscape architect in Basel.

Martin Kohlberger studied architecture in Vienna and Zurich, as well as philosophy at the University of Vienna. Since 2025 he has been practicing at Denkstatt sárl and teaching at ETH Zurich.

OCIO (Osservatorio CIvicO sulla casa e la residenzialità) is a grassroots civic watchdog focused on housing and residency issues in Venice. It was founded by local residents in 2019, after a year of meetings and self-organized training sessions with city committees, associations, fellow residents, and researchers. The group works to collect and analyze data on the housing situation in the city, and to create and share collective, accessible knowledge.

Rami Msallam studied architecture at ETH Zurich and completed his postgraduate studies with distinction at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, where he received the Forensic Architecture Scholarship. He is currently assistant at the Chair of Architecture Heritage and Sustainability at ETH Zurich.

Nathalie Marj is an architect and researcher born in Beirut. She graduated from McGill University and from EPFL, where her thesis was awarded the RIBA Award for Sustainable Design. She works in practice in Geneva and as an assistant for Prof. Charlotte Malterre Barthes at the EPFL RIOT Lab.

Laurene Cen studies at UdK Berlin. Born in southern China, she lived eight years in Hong Kong, a city she now calls home. She stands at and cares about edges: the leftovers between places and narratives.

Selin Doğaner was raised in Istanbul and is based in Berlin, where she studied at UdK. She looks at how planning, law, and reconstruction can both shape and challenge exclusion and displacement.

Sean Vegezzi is an artist and researcher investigating civic life, urban development, and security architecture and policy in relation to personal and subjective issues of autonomy, privacy, and security. They recently completed an interdisciplinary degree in urban studies, psychology and politics at The New School.

Rémi Madrona is a French architect born in Paris and educated at EPFL and ETH Zürich. As a second-generation immigrant from Spain, Morocco, and Vietnam, his upbringing shaped his research through a strong post-colonial reading of architecture. His practice engages with Do-It-Yourself building culture.

Deepthi Maria Puthenpurackal is an architect who graduated from ETH Zürich, where she worked as an assistant for Prof. Laurent Stalder and Prof. Silke Langenberg. Her research project തോർത്ത് (thorthu) was developed with the support of Sebastiaan Loosen and Prof. Tom Avermaete.

-----------------------------------------

Organisation
Symposium and exhibition organised by Giacomo Rossi, Shriya Chaudhry, Emma Kaufmann LaDuc for Unmasking Space in collaboration with Ca’ Buccari.

Giacomo Rossi is an architect and researcher based in Switzerland and Italy. Following studies in Mendrisio and ETH Zurich, he is investigating architecture as an agent of empowerment. A co-founder of Unmasking Space, he is an editor at Trans Magazin and has collaborated with the CCA and Kunsthalle Zurich, among others.

Shriya Chaudhry is an activist and architect, having completed their master’s degree in architecture at ETH Zurich. They are one of the co-founders of Unmasking Space and currently work as a landscape architect in Basel.

Emma Kaufmann LaDuc is a landscape architect based in Zurich. Following studies at TU Wien and ETH Zurich, she is currently a researcher at the Chair of Affective Architectures under Prof. An Fonteyne and founder of studio PASS, a collaborative landscape practice thinking through resilient systems.

Special Thanks
Bidi Beck, Noemi Biasetton, Filémon Brault-Archambeault, Sibylle Novello, Erica Overmeer, Muck Petzet, Irene Tassinari, Qianer Zhu.

The program is supported by the Department of the Ongoing at the Chair of Affective Architectures (Prof. An Fonteyne) ETH-Zurich and the D-ARCH Enabling Grant.

en/it