School's Out! #45 with Pedro Gadanho

School’s Out! #45 - Climax Change!

For this School’s Out! on Friday 25 October, we invited Pedro Gadanho, architect, author and independent curator based in Lisbon.

Pedro Gadanho will talk about his book "Climax Change - And What To Do With It". Following on the presentation of Climax Change, How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency, published shortly after the Covid pandemic,  the author reflects on his personal journey involving ecological reckonings, perspectives of societal collapse and the current potential for sci-fi urbanism.

A 2020 Loeb Fellow from Harvard University, Gadanho holds an MA in art and architecture, and is a PhD in Architecture and Mass Media from the University of Porto. From 2012 to 2016, he was the curator of contemporary architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he coordinated the Young Architects Program and curated exhibitions such as 9+1 Ways of Being Political, Uneven Growth, and A Japanese Constellation. Between 2015 and 2019, he was the founding Director of MAAT, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, in Lisbon, where he initiated more than 50 exhibition projects, including shows and publications such as Utopia/Dystopia, Tension & Conflict, and Eco-Visionaries. During 2020-21, he led a bid for European Capital of Culture 2027 by a coalition of 17 cities in Portugal’s interior, and became a Guest Professor at the University of Beira Interior. In the Spring of 2024, he was a Guest Design Critic at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

He is the author of Climax Change! How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency (ACTAR Publishers: New York/Barcelona, 2022). His previous book, Arquitetura em Público, won the FAD Prize for Thought and Criticism in 2012. He has edited the BEYOND bookazine, the ShrapnelContemporary blog, and contributes regularly to international publications.

Programme

18:00 Doors open, drinks bites and tunes

19:00 - 20:15 Presentation by Pedro Gadanho + Q&A

20:15 - 20:30 Short film by AFFR

20:30 - 22:00 Drinks, bites and tunes

---

About Climax Change! - How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency

Climax Change! offers an overview of how the current environmental emergency will impact the practice of architecture. At a crossroads in which the construction sector and built environment produce nearly 40% of greenhouse gases accountable for global warming, architects are just starting to acknowledge their complicity in an impending disaster.
In need of a paradigm shift similar to that of the Modern Movement, architecture desperately requires clear guidelines and targets so as to operate its inevitable transformation towards an ecologically-friendly design logic. From historical analyses of ecocide or the environmental avant-gardes, to topics such as decarbonization, degrowth, the Great Transition and the aspirations of Green New Deals, this book features ten essays around today’s climate change debates, bringing them home to architectural thinking.