public speaking
Co-joining city, land, and sea workshop
9th April 2024
The University of Plymouth hosted a one day workshop to brainstorm on how Plymouth City Council and local stakeholders might deliver a landscape-restoration-led vision for Plymouth in an event called ‘Co-joining city, land, and sea’. The intention of the workshop was to take a preliminary look at a co-joining of Plymouth's city, land, and sea (the land including its hinterlands and catchment area of the Plym and Tamar Rivers), and so formulate ideas for bringing together its existing and potential socio-cultural, economic, and environmental assets that might help to realise synergies benefitting the resilience and livelihoods of the city and wider region.
A Small Studio as invited to lead one of three workshops, and the other two were led by Blanche Cameron (Lecturer in Environmental Design, University College London) and Lynne Sullivan, OBE (Chair - Good Homes Alliance, Royal Institute of British Architects Ambassador for Climate Change) with a team of students from the architecture course at The University of Plymouth.
The day-long workshop was organised by Professor Robert Brown and made possible with support from:
- Plymouth City Council
- Plymouth Sound National Marine Park
- Royal Institute of British Architects (Plymouth Chapter)
- University of Plymouth Architecture
- University of Plymouth Arts Institute
- University of Plymouth Marine Institute
- University of Plymouth Policy Engagement
The event was structured with a wide range of talks, presentations and action-based workshops.
Design Ventura at the Design Museum
30th November
We have contributed yearly to the Design Museum’s brilliant initiative called ‘Design Ventura’, and this year was particularly exciting because A Small Studio as asked to speak at an online training workshop for teachers to expand on the Design Ventura 2023 theme: Community and Colour.
Central Saint Martin’s Lecture on Maintenance and Joy
9th April 2024
This Spatial Practices public lecture series, hosted by BA Architecture Central Saint Martins, discussed the intersections between maintenance and spatial practices today. From the scale of the human body to that of the planet, the series asked, what methods are spatial practitioners using to connect maintenance with joy in times of crisis? How do they contribute to repairing the world while committing to make new? The series was called “Maintenance and Joy : Ethical practice in times of crisis” and A Small Studio was invited to be a guest speaker. Helena Rivera spoke about A Small Studio built work, speculative work and the ethos of the studio in a lecture called, “Maintenance, innovation and ethics of housing”.
Using a participatory approach to transform public realm.
9th November 2023
As part of a Placemaking Module led by Professor Silvia Gullino from College of Built Environment, Birmingham City University, A Small Studio was invited to explain how a participatory approach can be used to transform the public realm. We presented different community engagement projects and their design solutions that have been ongoing in West Norwood (London) in collaboration with Station to Station BID and London Borough of Lambeth. These include high street renovation: a pilot project converting a derelict off-license to workspace; a digital engagement; and an area-wide workspace strategy for the high street. The workshop was open to students and researchers from the Property Development and Planning course (specifically the Placemaking module) but also open to researchers, lecturers and students from the planning, real estate, architecture and arch technology community within Birmingham City University.
The cladding crisis symposium
February 2023
After years of studying the breakdown of New Towns policy as a large-scale housing solution, the biggest finding that studio founder Helena Rivera made during her PhD research was that residents suffered years of neglect after the Development Corporations were wound up and Tenant Management Organisations took over and did not engage with them. Despite having local knowledge and years of first-hand experience residents were not really taken into account on the decisions that affected them, and their voices were inexplicably unheard. A similar situation occurred in North Kensington to Grenfell Tower residents.
At A Small Studio we work constantly on community engagement and amplifying local voices. That’s why Helena represented A Small Studio and joined the panel to discuss ‘neglected user voice’ with the phenomenal panel including Cllr Emma Dent Coad, Dictating to the Estate Production , Shareefa Energy and Edward Daffarn.
This was part of a symposium in February 2023 at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) being chaired by Liam Ross from the University of Edinburgh and Giulia Rosa from AA. The symposium was called ‘The Cladding Crisis: going beyond the layers of the façade’. The day was divided in 3 parts: part 1 on the politics of the façade; part 2 on the neglected voice of the residents and part 3 on moving forwards. See full programme.
The symposium aims to bring together different voices to discuss one of the most tragic failures of the built environment: the Grenfell Tower fire.
City dialogues Bogotá
9th November 2023
This event, in two cities, at one time, was screened to a live global audience as part of a digital programme called ‘Londonon Around the World: Cities in Dialogue’. The continuous 13-hour global relay of broadcasts was hosted by Londonon - a rolling research and residency programme run by a collective of London-based architecture studios – partnered with practices in Sydney, Paris, Barcelona, Oslo, Tokyo, Bogota, Shenzhen, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Mogadishu, Cordoba, New York and Montevideo. Londonon brings to the surface questions about the accepted norms of where we live, where we work, and how we travel. As we emerge from extended periods of isolation and restrictions, the opportunity arises to positively reflect on what the future might hold for us, and how we might adapt our pre-covid rituals for transformative gain. Conversations includes topics such as fabricating housing, the legacy of the Olympic movement, changing attitudes to travel and many other topics.
In September 2021, A Small Studio spoke to members of different urban collectives based in Bogotá. Perro Bario unveils the inequality through urban cartography using different languages, from architecture to Hip Hop culture. Modulando tries to tackle a response to social conflict by creating informal urban intervention in an effort to generate a space for alternative pedagogy and dialogue. Arquitectura Expandida collective supports urban groups through the construction of physical and symbolic spaces and in the creation of critical cartography. CasiNadie (Camilo Pinto) is an activist and rapper from the west side, where he is the leader of the collective group called Golpe de Barrio.
