With architectural production becoming ever more beholden to the needs of capital and the building industry, the role of the architect is changing. This series of events and lectures, held at the RA, address the critical issues informing architecture today.

Image caption: KA300 Pavilion, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2015, by J. MAYER H / Photo Frank Dinger

Architecture and Freedom

The work of the German architect Jürgen Mayer H stands at the intersection of architecture, design and digital technology. His practice operates across scale and typology: from master-planning to buildings, product design to art.

For Mayer, emerging media and materials allow a fundamental rethinking of how we understand space and the potential for new forms of human activity and communication. Mayer kicked off the season with a discussion of his work and its reflection on the potential for architecture to act as a conduit for freedom through participation and social interactivity.

Image caption: Jürgen Mayer H © Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert

Architecture and freedom: Jürgen Mayer H

Architect and theorist, Patrik Schumacher, considers the various parameters for architectural practice today. One of architecture’s foremost designers and polemicists, Schumacher is a director of Zaha Hadid Architects, which he joined in 1988, and is involved in all the practice’s projects, playing an active role in each phase of design development.

He has taught at architecture schools across the world and has been co-director of the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association since 1996. His writings have frequently appeared in print and across the media. In this lecture, Schumacher reflects on the range of issues and agendas that “burden” architecture in the twenty-first century.

Image caption: Patrik Schumacher / Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

Architecture and freedom: Patrik Schumacher

In this podcast, our expert panel consider what architecture’s responsibilities should be to the public good and whether it is time for architects to adopt a new code of ethics.

Today with architecture in thrall to private interests to a greater degree than perhaps ever before, it is time to reassess architects’ responsibilities beyond those to the client, and to the broader public good. Do architecture and architects require a new code of ethics? If so, what should be the parameters and who should decide them?

Speakers include Jane Hall, founding member of Turner prize-winning Assemble and Christine Murray, editor of Architectural Review (chair).

Image caption: Tower construction © Artur Bogacki/Alamy

Architecture and freedom: Architectural Ethics

In this podcast, Reiner de Graaf reflects on architecture’s different roles in today’s globalised world. An architect, academic and writer, de Graaf is a partner of OMA and director of AMO, the practice’s think tank and research studio based in Rotterdam. AMO’s work extends beyond architecture to encompass media, politics, sociology, renewable energy, technology, fashion, curating, publishing, and graphic design.

In addition to his work for AMO, De Graaf is responsible for a number of the OMA’s building and master-planning projects in Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. In this lecture, de Graaf considers architecture’s social, economic and political role in today’s globalised world.

Image caption: Reinier de Graaf © Ekaterina Izmestieva/ Strelka Institute

Architecture and freedom: Reinier De Graaf

Spaces of freedom are typically seen as synonymous with public space, where freedom of assembly and expression are inherent rights. Increasingly, though, public space, especially in cities, is being eroded by private, often commercially driven forces. At the same time, we have seen the rise of the digital realm heralded as a new free and democratic space for self-expression and debate.

This, however, is also under attack through both corporate and state-sponsored surveillance and data collection. While services on the Internet are “free” to use, the business models that sustain them depend on the collecting and commercialisation of our every digital interaction.

Image caption: Granary Square, Kings Cross © Monica Wells/Alamy

Architecture and Freedom: Spaces Of Freedom

In the final lecture of the series, Farshid Moussavi discusses architecture’s function as an agent in shaping everyday life. For Moussavi, architecture “produces platforms for the way people engage with uses of buildings” – an idea which she has explored through practice, education and research.

A co-founder of Foreign Office Architects, which won international attention with the Yokohama Ferry Terminal, Moussavi established her own practice in 2011, which has since completed the acclaimed Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art in Ohio. Moussavi is Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and has published a number of books deriving from her research and teaching.

Image caption: Farshid Moussavi RA © Dan Stevens

Architecture and freedom: Farshid Moussavi

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Architecture and Freedom

Royal Academy of Arts