KOOZ You define Pantopia as “an online educational accelerator powered by spatial thinkers.” Could you expand on this assertion and the objectives of the platform?

SL, AV Pantopia’s goal as an online educational platform is to share the conversations, ideas, and proposals beyond the institutional walls of the Architectural Association for students and practitioners far and wide. The term ‘accelerator’ is used to denote acceleration of knowledge, the capacity to learn quickly from others, to push one's thinking further. An acceleration of thought so to speak. Finally, ‘powered by special thinkers’ is more of a playful term to designate anybody who thinks through a form of spatial practice. We don't believe architects have a monopoly on spatial thinking.

KOOZ Pantopia.xyz was founded at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, how important are academic institutions as platforms to undertake research?

SL, AV Academic institutions are tremendously important as platforms to develop research. A space in which to safely experiment and to test out risky ideas. A space in which to critique current hegemonic paradigms. More importantly, they are places where people from different backgrounds and perspectives come together to cross pollinate ideas. I think schools play a crucial role in pushing the boundaries of the architectural discipline not just technically but also ethically and politically in ways that cannot necessarily be done in practice. Academic institutions offer a place in which to develop a form of engaged practice which students take into the world, which is fundamental to transforming how the industry thinks.

KOOZ What is the importance of engaging young architects and designers in this undertaking?

SL, AVThe project of Pantopia is interested in engaging with the systemic changes, good or bad for that matter, that need to happen or that will happen because of the climate crisis and all the subsequent social, economic, environmental, political, and cultural crises. I believe it's crucial to get young designers to engage with these crises because we are experiencing the collateral benefit of crises deliberately designed by those in power. Often when we speculate about a future of a climate of breakdown, we often perceive a world of scarcity, a world of austerity which is mainly associated with a negative vision of the future. The platform seeks to engage in these crises to actively produce territorial projects that show that an alternative future is possible, that alternative visions can be positive, albeit they need to acknowledge the complexity and the challenges ahead. There is a real power in speculation as a tool developing and presenting deeply political spatial narratives. Because architecture represents the inescapable reality we interact with daily, architecture is political. As a result, architecture is the perfect vehicle or interface through which to analyze current dynamics and propose future narratives.

KOOZ Rather than designing built artefacts, Pantopia.xyz’s investigations advocate for the design of territorial changes. How does the platform challenge and explore the role and potential of the architect within our contemporary society?

SL, AVPantopia advocates for territorial transformations through design and the transforming of the institutions that govern it. Such an ambition requires us to design and deploy strategies, frameworks, and architectural devices at different scales - whether they be landscape devices, infrastructural devices, or civic infrastructure. Often, we find that conditions of inequality within our territories come from the unequal distribution of these architectural devices. Pantopia proposes participatory spatial projects through the strategic distribution of architectural devices. Pantopia inscribes itself in a long line of politically engaged speculative architecture and advocates for using architecture to visualize and present political projects. Perhaps where it differs is in demonstrating how the architectural brief and design can be interfaces in which to present, organize and challenge existing ideas in the real world and academia through speculation.

We hope that future designers will bring this attitude to the discipline and inform how they practice architecture and what relationships they choose to build. In the last few years, Pantopia has focused more and more on designing humble, accessible, and simple architecture which is a far cry from the technically complex speculative architecture that emerged from the early 2010’s with 3D and parametric modelling. These simple projects become radical propositions when they are tied to a challenging political proposition. In the same way it is easy to build post office but hard to implement a postal system, it is easy to build a hospital but difficult to build an equitable universal health care system. I think this is where the main tension and value of Pantopia lies: that it balances proposition with advocacy through the deployment of simple architectures and simple interventions.

KOOZ Throughout the past few years, you have developed a strategic framework to support the young designers engaging in the research of Pantopia.xyz., how does this inform the methodology and toolkit of the unit?

SL, AVIn Pantopia we love to appropriate words and terms coined by other individuals, redefine them and in the context of our briefs. To this end, the notion of ‘crisis’ was adapted from Naomi Klein while the term ‘economies of life’ was borrowed from French thinker Jacques Attali. Other terms like ‘territorial branding’ or ‘collateral benefits’ are, on the other hand, introduced by us. The ‘Third Territory’ is an amalgamation of the French ‘tiers-lieu’ and Bruno Latour’s call for a ‘third attractor’ as an alternative to the global vs. local vectors of modernity. Over the years, these terms have come to form a set of operational terms which we deploy to initiate conversations around a common brief. This methodology helps us navigate and find commonality between our different perspectives, backgrounds, and interests whilst providing for a ground on which to speak about reverse migration in China or energy cooperatives in Lebanon. This library of terms constantly evolves from the directions and focus of the students.

KOOZ Since its founding the platform has worked through a multitude of briefs which span from indulging in a state of crisis to produce collateral benefits, to reimagining forms of societal, economic and environmental occupation to exploring issues of funding and the uneven distribution of our economic system. What informs the agenda of the platform? How does one brief lead into the next?

SL, AVThe core goal of Pantopia is to embrace, or actively declare a crisis on, conditions of systemic inequality found within our built environment. To describe them in space and time and transform them through design. This approach has led the brief to evolve over the years: from dealing with mega issues like how to convert Poland’s entire coal infrastructure to a construction demolition waste network, to then focusing on how economies of life can shift the dynamics within a territory, to asking how you support and fund these well-wishing architectural projects and governance structures. The agenda is primarily informed by the work of the students. As educators we input certain concepts to underpin the collective conversation we want to have, but ultimately the brief evolves by looking at the overall body of work done by the students and the direction they take the latter. Each year, we learn from what the students have achieved to accelerate that learning process.

KOOZ How do you envision the platform evolving in the coming years? What project do you envision being developed in the future?

SL, AVWe hope the platform will continue to grow and host new collaborations with individuals and institutions alike. For the last two years we had an incredibly productive collaboration with the TU-Delft based studio Transitional Territories led by Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin. We hope to continue collaboration along those lines but also aim to produce more workshops to expand the theoretical and practical methodologies of Pantopia within different contexts.

Bio

Stefan Laxness is a London based architectural researcher and media artist. His creative practice explores environmental restoration as a collective process of transformation and resistance. Stefan was a project leader at Forensic Architecture where he led numerous investigations, including the Ayotzinapa Case, developed methodologies for analysing airstrikes in the Middle East and modelling sites of human rights abuse from witness testimony. Stefan taught a design studio (AA Diploma 9) at the Architectural Association in London and co-founded Pantopia.xyz. He is currently a PhD candidate at ETH Zurich.

Antoine Vaxelaire is an architect, educator and creative advisor. He graduated from the AA with Honours in 2013, and has worked in architecture studios in London, Brussels, Zurich, Tokyo and Mexico City. Antoine taught a design studio (AA Diploma 9) at the Architectural Association in London and co-founded Pantopia.xyz. He is the cofounder and creative director of APPIA, a virtual production studio based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.