Irina Davidovici is an architect who has dedicated herself to doing research on the area of Architecture, specifically on the issues of design, urbanisation, collective and cooperative housing in European cities, modern and contemporary Swiss architecture.
She holds a PhD in History and Philosophy of Architecture from the University of Cambridge which she completed in 2008, and her doctoral thesis was published as a book with the title Forms of Practice, German-Swiss architecture 1980-2000, which was awarded the RIBA President’s Research Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in 2009.
I would like to draw your attention to the assertiveness and momentum of the title in this brilliant publication, which admits a double and suggestive reading in Portuguese: Forms of Practice or Practices of Form if you prefer. I would also like to point out the intelligence of the choice of time and context of the publications and their utter quality, as well as the choice of their authors, whose critical recognition is unquestionable. Obvious as it may seem, it is a very relevant attribute as it makes this exercise of synthesis of a period, whose reflection and influence in the history of architecture and in subsequent generations of architects is still overwhelming, even more important. I imagine this choice not to be unrelated to the time the architects’ duo Herzog & de Meuron spent in the Basel office and the contact with the conceptual practice of these authors, something that I naturally understand and with which I certainly feel great affinity (for the choices and for the time), difficult to conceal. In this work she develops her project-theory with simultaneous simplicity and sufficient critical elaboration, to the point of creating robust and very precise concepts to explain the publications from the architectural analysis and synthesis of the project-objects, the context of their geographical place, their history and the conceptual tensions with the tradition and the authoring queries, creating an articulated new state of the art and an original paradigmatic framework of case studies of undeniable value.
Irina has lectured and published in various international forums, having been a lecturer at EPFL in Lausanne, GSD Harvard, Kingston University in London, and ETH Zurich, where she is currently the Director of the respective archives (GTA).
Before closing, I would like to anticipate that we are anxiously awaiting the publication of her two latest works, whose simple utterance fosters our curiosity:
“Common Grounds: A Comparative History of Early Housing Estates in Europe” (Triest Publishers, Zurich) and “The Autonomy of Theory: Ticino Architecture and Its Critical Reception” (gta Publishers, Zurich). (The latter being especially resonant in the context of the present room).
Dear Irina, we thank you for your availability and diligent acceptance to teach this class in our PhD programme, Project Theory and Practice.
The floor is yours. Thank you very much.
Nuno Brandão Costa, 28th April 2023