Arquin-FAD organises FAD-TALKS to become a meeting point between architecture and interior design professionals and society, foster debate and raise awareness about architectural culture and other spatial disciplines.

In a world where images are the main way to convey messages, where people are exposed to hundreds of images in their daily lives and where new generations use them to build their identity through social networks, what is their significance for architecture and design?
Images have been key to professional practice, serving as indisputable tools and guiding threads in the creative process.

Photography is an artefact. Images enable free interpretation and are also tools for interpreting the world, just as much as paintings or drawings are. Images are instruments of power.
Today, images are how people learn about the most important architectural practices and it is often only through them that we can imagine photographed spaces. The architect imagines, designs and sometimes photographs his own work. The person who portrays the works is often not the designer, but the photographer, and it is his gaze towards that space that will reach the eyes of others.

We will invite architects, photographers and artists to strike up a discussion between those who create images and those who design spaces.
The project aims to share the most important practices in architecture on an international and national scale based on an analysis of contemporary codes for representing it.
Is it architecture that has compromised photography, or is it rather photography that shapes contemporary architecture?
The project strives to highlight the transdisciplinary aspects and the importance of the image in all its spheres, aimed at contextualising it in Barcelona’s society and positioning the city as a benchmark on an international scale.

PROGRAM:

Monday, 2 December – From 6.30 pm to 9 pm
A common lens: Bas Princen and Kersten Geers in dialogue
Bas Princen and Kersten Geers, from OFFICE KGDVS, will present some of their most recent projects and discuss their work and their professional partnership. Going beyond the classic relationship between the architect and the photographer, they will explore projects in which the influence between their individual practices has been intertwined.

Tuesday, 10 December – From 6.30 pm to 9 pm
Cadavre exquis: art meets architecture
A conversation between Bleda y Rosa, Simone Marcolin, Del Rio Bani and Cecilia Coca about a team effort to create a previously unreleased exquisite corpse.

Thursday, 12 December – From 6 pm to 9 pm
Paradigm shift
Conversation between Adrien Verschuere (Baukunst) and Olivier Campagne on the creative process and the impact of images on architectural practice. Hyper-realistic images act as tools of representation, but also as guiding threads of the creative process until completion. The virtual image is a combination of art and technology. It is a medium for reflection and demonstrates the paradigm shift.

Bas Princen. Artist and photographer living and working in Rotterdam, Zurich and most recently Singapore. His work uses photography to focus on the changing urban landscape, investigating the various forms, outcomes and imaginaries of changing urban space.

Kersten Geers. Architect, and a partner of the studio OFFICE KGDVS, which he founded together with David Van Severen. Since its inception in Brussels in 2002, OFFICE has been committed to the idea of architecture as a cultural enterprise aimed at improving the environment in which we live.

Bleda y Rosa. María Bleda (Castellón, 1969) and José María Rosa (Albacete, 1970) have been working together for three decades, using rigorous and in-depth research to explore the link between image, place and memory. Campos de fútbol (Football fields), Campos de batalla (Battlefields), Origen (Origin) and Prontuario (Handbook) are just some of the most important photography series that they have produced in their career. They have used them to develop their own visual and textual language by which they return time and again to one of their main focuses of interest: representing the land. In 2008, they were awarded Spain’s National Photography Prize.

Cecilia Coca. Photographer and curator trained in Philosophy (University of Barcelona). Her work addresses both artistic practice and theoretical research, focusing on the relationship between image and landscape, as well as on the concepts of home and inhabited space in forming identities. She has also conducted academic research on the work of Italian photographer Guido Guidi.

Simone Marcolin. From Verona, works in Barcelona. His photography is mainly focused on spaces and objects.

Del Rio Bani. Architectural photography duo based in Barcelona and Florence. Gael del Río and Luca Bani have shared their vision and philosophy since 2017.

Adrien Verschuere founded Baukunst in Brussels in 2010 and again in Lausanne in 2017. He is a regular guest speaker at various institutions, including the Berlage Institute, the USI Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio, Kyoto Design Lab, the University of Tokyo and ETH Zürich. From 2019 to 2024, Adrien Verschuere has been a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Olivier Campagne runs a digital imaging studio in Paris. A trained architect, he has been generating renderings for decades. He has recently begun researching and working with AI-generated images. He is exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence through this medium on commissions from architectural firms like Bruther, Baukunst and Arrhov Frick.