IMPORTANT NOTICE:
This course will start at December 14th and will last until end of MARCH!

ARQUITETURA PARA CURITIBA | ARCHITECTURE FOR CURITIBA
The second edition of the exhibition "Architecture for Curitiba" will take place on the city Memorial starting on March 29th 2017, as a celebration to Curitiba's 324th birthday. It will display the research and projects developed around the theme by local architectural offices and worldwide student groups.Instead of focusing on the production of final projects, the pin-ups, open to the public, will be organized with members of the participant groups, government representatives and experts on the explored themes.The Students from TU Wien, our guest participants, will be key on expanding the discussion to a global discourse and refreshing our views on how to deal with a contemporary Curitiba. Professors from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) as well as professionals acting today in the city will be mentors of the student group, and will meet virtually on a regular basis to present and discuss the city, and provide all the needed material, information and feedback for the Austrian students.

It is time to reconsider Architecture in relation to the city.
The city, political by definition, is not spatially stable. It no longer refers only to geography or density, but also to an unstable  interconnectivity among multiple agents, where not only one but several urbanisms are developed. However, Brazilian institutions continue to promote a totalitarian and anachronistic planning, whereas the market moves its inconsequent production, and users simply adapt to the spaces as passive agents. More than the production of photogenic objects, Architecture must undertake the organisation of spaces for meeting or isolating, the boundaries between public and private, the inclusion of urban infrastructure to the daily life of its inhabitants.

"Architecture as Interface: where systems meet and interact."
The proposed theme emerges from the urge to shift the attention from the object to its relationships. The subtitle comes from the general definition of 'interface', but a quick search shows how broad its understanding can be: As a term little used within the Architecture discipline, 'Interface' opens up to new ways of placing it in the contemporary city: who (or what) is in relation to whom? How are these groups brought together? Who (or what) is excluded? Which protocols apply to communications between those present, and who determines this? What sort of new publics or communities might emerge as a result of this process?1 Also important, is the reflection on the role of Architecture itself. Interfaces are never neutral environments but they determine the possible outcomes. (1)
(1) These questions are extracted from the book The City as Interface:by Martijn de Waal.