Back to School With… Paulien Bremmer #1

The Other Construction Site

Back to School with… is a series of research-based lecture evenings, where we invite an inspiring guest to design and curate a program around a question or theme that is currently on their mind. For this edition, we’ve invited architect Paulien Bremmer to take us along her ongoing research project 'The Other Construction Site'.

“There is no alternative,” was the political slogan of Margaret Thatcher, who argued that liberal capitalism is the only viable system. It fits the traditional construction site like a glove. The existing system - driven by time and money, extractive, and masculine - is seen as universal and justifies the way of working.

But is this truly just? And does this way of working align with the urgent issues and transitions of our time? Shouldn't we focus on other values instead of primarily those of money? Can we move beyond a system that seems unshakable and believe in an alternative?

Session #1 - the conventional construction site

In this first evening of the series we explored the conventional construction site together with Mariana Moura, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Setareh Noorani and Alina Paias. We did so through the lens of the French-Brazilian Marxist architect, theorist, and painter Sergio Ferro, who emphasises the role of workers and the construction process over the final design. We also explored lesser known, alternative approaches, with special attention to women led construction projects from recent history. Read more about the full series here

About the Speakers

Paulien Bremmer is a cross-disciplinary architect, based in Amsterdam with a focus on architecture as a social and cultural praxis. She is trained as an architect at the TU Delft and obtained a Master of Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Bremmer is initiator of the multidisciplinary collaboration Federation Levitation a.k.a. Fedlev which won the design competition to realise the expansion of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut. She serves in advisory roles and teaches as guest lecturer at various universities and schools. Her research project The Other Building Site, was selected by the Creatieve Industries Fund NL within the open call Space for Justice. 

Mariana Moura is Professor of Architecture at the University of Antwerp’s Faculty of Design Sciences. Her research focuses on informal and self-organised spatial practices, drawing on decolonial and feminist theories. Her ongoing oral history project on women builders in self-produced architectures builds on the research conducted during her MSCA postdoctoral fellowship (2024–2025). Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges project (2021–2024), where she co-edited Design and the Building Site(Mack, 2025) and Architecture From Below: An Anthology (Mack, 2024).

Katie Lloyd Thomas Katie Lloyd Thomas was Professor of Theory and History of Architecture at Newcastle University where she currently holds a Visiting Professorship. Her research is concerned with labour, materiality and technology, and their intersections with feminist practice and theory. Publications include Building Materials: Material theory and the architectural specification (Bloomsbury, 2021) and with Tilo Amhoff and Nick Beech Industries of Architecture (Routledge Critiques, 2015). From 2020-2024 Katie was PI for the Brazil-UK project Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour for the New Field of Production Studies.

Setareh Noorani is an architect, researcher and curator at Nieuwe Instituut whose practice focuses on feminist, decolonial, non-institutional, and more-than-human perspectives in the way we build, remember and change cities. Setareh argues for alternative futures that foreground underexposed voices and forms of collectivity, translating research into exhibitions, publications, and public programmes.

Alina Paias is an architect, writer, curator, and researcher investigating the systems of architecture production by engaging with a broad range of philosophies. She has worked on the curation, design and production of exhibitions in the Americas and in Europe for several arts and architecture institutions. She was one of the curators for the 2024 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and she is a member of the Editorial Team for Footprint, the Delft Architecture Theory Journal.

Programme

18.00 – 19.00 Doors open and dinner served.

19.00 – 19.20 Introduction on ‘The Other Building Site’ by Paulien Bremmer

19.25 - 19.50 Presentation on architect, painter and historian Serio Ferro, by Mariana Moura Cruz                                         

19.55 – 20.00 Short presentation on the work of artist Mai Bauvald’s by Paulien Bremmer 

20:00 - 20:10 Recordings of Paulien Bremmer and Alina Paias in conversation with Sergio Ferro

20:10 – 20:20 Short break, bar open

20:20 – 20:45 Presentation on architectural specifications, by Katie Lloyd Thomas

20:45 – 21:00 Presentation on women + building sites in the 80's in the Netherlands by Setareh Noorani 

21:00 – 21:15 Wrap up by Paulien Bremmer

21.15 – 22.00 bar open and after talk