Learning with the Sea
Nancy Couling
Thursday 27/11, 14.00
Hall D and online
Our previous work reveals that we know little about the ocean although it lies directly in front of us, surrounds us, we hear its soundscape and observe its surface. Human–Ocean relations are today characterised by different forms of Ocean Blindness –from lack of knowledge or the dominance of complex science to persistent perception of the ocean as an empty surface or the ruthless exploitation of marine resources with disregard for the ecological consequences.
In collaboration with the art triennale Bergen Assembly (2025) we have explored what a reversed perspective from and with the sea–can teach us about these relations, the more-than-human oceanic world and different systems of inherent oceanic intelligence. Learning with the Sea may require unconventional research methods and produce challenging outcomes.
Nancy Couling is an Associate Professor at the Bergen School of Architecture in Norway. She is also a Senior Researcher & Coordinator MAS in Urban & Territorial Design, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She was a workshop expert on the urbanization of the oceans at the 5th Holcim Forum 2016 dedicated to “Infrastructure Space”. Nancy Couling completed a Marie Curie Post-Doc Fellowship at the TU Delft with the research project OceanUrb- the unseen spaces of extended urbanisation in the North Sea. Her special field of interest is the entanglement of urbanisation processes with liquid spaces and she is part of the research group “Territories of Extended Urbanisation” led by Christian Schmid & Milica Topalovic, Future Cities Laboratory 2, ETH Singapore. She previously taught and practiced in Auckland, NZ, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Venice & Berlin where she co-founded & -directed the practice cet-0/cet-01 until 2010. She co-edited the prize-winning Barents Lessons- Teaching & Research in Architecture (2012) with Harry Gugger, Aurélie Blanchard & Ludovic Balland Typography Cabinet Basel, and The Urbanisation of the Sea (forthcoming 2020) with Carola Hein, and continues to exhibit, publish and lecture internationally. She formed the interdisciplinary partnership cet-0 in Berlin in 2005, (2005-2010 cet-01) focusing on urban design, and also taught in the Department of Urban Design at Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin). She is the author of Barents Lessons: Teaching and Research in Architecture with Harry Gugger and Aurelie Blanchard (Park Books, 2013).
In the framework of the course EKTOS POLIS: Researching the Urban Otherwise - Wanderings across Extended Urbanisation
Observatory of the Countryside
tutor: Metaxia Markaki
For online attendance contact memarkaki@uth.gr
See the poster here.
Elina Letsiou
Embodied Domesticity: Landscapes of Care and Sustenance in Thessaly
Tuesday, 25 November 2025 14:00
Hall E
Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly
Pedion Areos, Volos
Lecture delivered within the course Architectural Design VII: Density.
Tutors: E. Dimitrakopoulou, Z. Kotionis, V. Trova, C. Paniyiris
Abstract:
The presentation introduces a posthumanist framework for understanding architecture as a relational practice embedded within networks of interdependence among humans, non-human actors, materials, and socio-ecological systems. Within these networks, flows of care, resources, and labour shape spatial configurations and transform accommodation practices. The research focuses on the region of Thessaly, approaching the landscape through the agencies of its water bodies.
Documentary Screening
TRANSFORMATION - A Settlement in Waiting
Thanos Karanikas and Dimitra Kosma
Ground Floor of the postgraduate hall
Thursday 13.11, 14:00
Siddique Motala
Storytelling, Heritage in 3D, and Counter-Surveying
Wednesday 12/11/2025, 14.00-16.00
Amphitheater, Department of Architecture, School of Engineering,
Pedion Areos
Volos GR
ABSTRACT: This presentation briefly introduces and explores several interrelated themes: (1) the use of storytelling in geomatics education, (2) 3D heritage documentation and research conducted by Global Digital Heritage Afrika, and (3) community work that has been done in areas of apartheid forced removals. In South Africa, geomatics education is an extension of the old land surveying education developed during the apartheid era. A critical intervention involved introducing storytelling into the geomatics curriculum. This then inspired the ongoing work of Global Digital Heritage Afrika, a research group dedicated to the digital documentation of heritage sites. Siddique will then describe his work in documenting the intangible heritage of communities who have experienced apartheid forced removals.
Bio
Siddique Motala is an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the academic lead of Global Digital Heritage Afrika (GDHA), a research group dedicated to the digital documentation of heritage sites, monuments and museum collections. He has a BSc in land surveying, an MSc in digital photogrammetry, and a PhD in Education. His research interests are spatio-temporal mapping, storytelling, posthumanism, transportation, socially just pedagogies and decolonization in engineering education. For the last 15 years, Siddique has been mapping and researching District Six and other sites of apartheid forced removals. He conducts transdisciplinary research with a diversity of disciplines such as history, film & media studies, computer science, education, museum studies and archival studies.
The lecture forms part of the program of the international meetings South-South Dialogues: Spaces, Cultures, Languanges, Sciences realized in the framework ofErasmus + Mobility Program agreement betweenthe University of Thessaly, Greece and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Kate le Roux
Thinking within the geopolitical South towards revaluing languages and literacies towards an in-common for/in STEM education
Wednesday 12/11/2025, 14.00-16.00
Amphitheater, Department of Architecture, School of Engineering,
Pedion Areos
Volos GR
ABSTRACT: Thinkers of a decolonial orientation highlight a (longstanding) inadequacy of dominant traditions of intellectual inquiry for ‘knowing’ and acting in a world that is increasingly experienced materially, inequitably, through related extreme weather events, resource depletion, health emergencies, poverty, policing of voice, war, (forced) movement, and a becoming of the digital ‘human’. Yet our thinking world is governed by principles of hierarchical separation, given life in the economic, political, social, linguistic, and technological processes of coloniality and its neocolonial and neoliberal afterlives. These principles are felt deeply and solidly - conceptually, physically and materially - in South Africa, and particularly in Cape Town, a city in which I live and practise as a teacher and researcher at an historically elite, public university. Pervading our work in this context are questions of how education might be a site of thinking and acting, anew, relationships towards liveability, with dignity and equality, for all living beings. I approach this problem from the perspective of ‘language’, prompted by thinkers of a decolonial orientation such as Gautam Bhan, Eduard Glissant, Ursula le Guin, Catherine Kell, Achille Mbembe, and Francis Nyamnjoh. I am reminded that it is precisely the ‘power’ of language that positions it centrally as the monolingual ‘root’ of coloniality, and that repairing the world requires voices of all the archives of the world. Thus, I am interested in the possibility of thinking and practising languages and literacies, in plural, as assemblage and intervention within the (dis)connections, (im)mobilities, (im)permanencies, and (un)certainties that characterise relations in an in-common. In this presentation I offer, humbly, my current thinking in this direction, and how I am working in research and education development in collaborations in STEM education.
Bio
Kate le Rouxis an Associate Professor in the Language Development Group, Academic Development Program, at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research, teaching, education development, and leadership are located in the interplay of languages, literacies, and mathematics in the sciences and engineering. She draws theoretically and methodologically on critical thought in mathematics education within the socio-political and socio-ecological, languages and literacies; and decoloniality. With a deep commitment to democratising knowledge and knowledge production, she is curious about issues of equity, justice, power, access, design, relations, and place in multilingual contexts. And she welcomes the opportunity to pursue this commitment in various journal editing roles, including as an Associate Editor of the African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education. Kate was awarded a PhD in Mathematics Education by the University of the Witwatersrand in 2011. She was a Mandela Mellon Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & American Research at Harvard University in 2014. Currently, she is co-chairing the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction (ICMI) Study 27, ‘Mathematics Education and the Socio-Ecological’, and holds a Senior Fellowship on the UCT-Bristol Collaboration Program.
The lecture forms part of the program of the international meetings South-South Dialogues: Spaces, Cultures, Languanges, Sciences realized in the framework ofErasmus + Mobility Program agreement betweenthe University of Thessaly, Greece and theUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa.