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Whose City? Radical Democracy in Architecture & Urban Design


Visiting Professor Gabu Heindl
Wednesday 8th May
16:30-18:00, The Well (floor 16)
Arts Tower

When commons and public space have to be defended/expanded against capital takeovers, the politics of radical democracy maintain the task of deepening democratic relationships. A radical-democratic conception of architecture and urbanism connects with the popular agency originating with democratic social and political movements. While bringing expertise into alliances with, e.g. anti-racist or feminist politics, the planner enters into such articulations not without critically examining her or his own role as bearer of knowledge and, thus, authority.

The lecture is structured around current anti-capitalist struggles over housing and public space in Vienna; our office work on intersectionality in housing, and a publicly-commissioned non-building plan which became politically articulated in alliance with a grass-roots urban movement defending urban space from commodification.

Gabu Heindl
Architect, urban planner, and theorist based in Vienna. Visiting Professor at Sheffield University, teaching in Vienna at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Founder and director of GABU Heindl Architektur, whose work spans public space and buildings, collective housing, urban planning and urban research. 

Gabu Heindl studied at Princeton University (as Fulbright Scholar), Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and Geidai University, Tokyo. In 2013-2017 she was chairwoman of The Austrian Society for Architecture (ÖGFA). She is the author of numerous publications and curator of exhibitions and symposia. Her work has been exhibited at Venice Biennale, Hong Kong and Shenzhen Biennale, Storefront for Art and Architecture in NY amongst others. Gabu lectures internationally, with a focus on housing politics of Red Vienna with regard to contemporary Rebel Cities. Her current research deals with the relationship of architecture and urban planning to radical democracy.


The lecture is jointly hosted by the MA in Urban Design and research group Design, Engagement and Practice of the University of Sheffileld School of Architecture.
For information please contact Beatrice De Carli: b.a.decarli@sheffield.ac.uk