Mariana Pestana "Designs for more than one:redefining place and community"

Mariana Pestana is an architect and curator interested in critical social practice and the role of fiction in re-imagining futures for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis. She co-founded the collective The Decorators, an interdisciplinary practice that makes collaborative public realm interventions and cultural programmes, currently design fellows at Stanley Picker Gallery. Previously Mariana worked as a curator at the Department of Architecture, Design and Digital at the Victoria and Albert Museum and lectured at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Arts, and Royal College of Arts. Recently, she co-curated the exhibitions The Future Starts Here, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2018) and Eco Visionaries: Art and Architecture After the Anthropocene at MAAT (2018), Eco Visionaries: Towards an Interspecies Future at Matadero (2019), and a third iteration of the latter at The Royal Academy (2019). She was the curator of the exhibitions The Real and Other Fictions for Close, Closer, Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2013) and This Time Tomorrow for the V&A at the World Economic Forum (2016). She curated Fiction Practice, the Young Curators Lab for Porto Design Biennale 2019. Pestana holds a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Aesthetics of Architectural and Urban Research course led by Aslıhan Demirtaş investigates architectural production beyond buildings and explores research and design work of speculative and provocative nature.

The 2020-2021 semester critically explores the Anthropocene and climate change while problematizing the ‘museum of natural history.’ Students will reevaluate the what, how and why of a natural history museum of a damaged planet while considering the urgencies of today highlighted further by the pandemic. The course is enriched by guest lecturers of various disciplines.