RE-POSSESSION: A Measure of Architecture with Amin Taha

Amin Taha teaches a vertical studio on the Architecture MA: ADS5 – Joining, Binding & Completing – What Do You Mean?

He was born in Berlin and is settled in London where he is an architect and currently Chairperson at Groupwork. Amin began an independent studio in 2003 and incorporated Groupwork as an Employee Ownership Trust. Amin has taught, written and lectured on architecture, sat on the RIBA National and International Awards Jury and aids property research groups and funds.

RE-POSSESSION Upcoming Events

Thursday 31 March, 6.30pm (BST)
Waste as Pedagogy
Marco Armiero and Justin McGuirk.

Thursday 5 May, 6.30pm (BST)
Schizoanalysis for All
Godofredo Pereira & Susana Caló.

Friday 13 May, 6.30pm (BST)
Against the Line
Charmaine Chua, Fred Moten & Stefano Harney.

RE-POSSESSION International Lecture Series 2021/22

‘Un Mundo Donde Quepan Muchos Mundos’

‘For a world in which many worlds fit’

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

Carrying the common wind of last year’s Co-liberation series, this year we look to inhabit and expand the idea of “Re-possession”.

We see possession as relating to oneself and one's place. It is both material and ethereal. It can be reclaimed and reoriented. In the spirit of social movements that seek to both take back and push forward, we refer to repossession as the struggle for an emancipated ownership: an object, state or practice of (re)produced belonging, felt as equally outward and inward, reciprocally individual and collective. It is a challenge to property: permeable and responsive to both belonging and unbelonging.

Over the course of the series, we will reach into and out from the earth and the body. We will begin by excavating the relationships between geological, decolonial, and architectural practices, before exploring corporeal acts and atmospheres, somatic limitations and horizons, and the embodiment and enactment of emancipated selves and spaces. We will trace the lines that are drawn to oppress, extract and eliminate, but we will also outline the interdependencies that can unsettle colonial logic.

With these discussions we seek a practice that can harness the moments and movements that both shape space and strengthen struggle. We also nurture an intentional community, situated in the affordances of now and grasping towards a possible future. By mapping emancipatory routes between ground and horizon, we aim to 'get to the heart of the matter': to stretch out and open up where it meets, holds, and forms us, and to foreground the ideas and artefacts that build memory, militancy, solidarity, imagination and action otherwise.

The RE-POSSESSION RCA International Lecture Series is curated by Charlotte Grace and Dubravka Sekulić in collaboration with Adrian Lahoud.