AFP Steering Committee 2020

Introducing the Architects for Peace Steering Committee 2020

On behalf of the new Steering Committee, I’d like to introduce the members elected in December 2019.

Firstly, apologies for the delay in communications. National and global crises in different parts of the world have meant the incumbents have been operating on a day-to-day basis in many parts of the world.

The committee members are not new to AFP. The elected committee is made up of the Founder and first President of the organization, Beatriz Maturana Cossio who established AFP in 2003, two of the founding members, Eva Rodriguez Riestra and Anthony McInneny, and a former President of the organization (2015-2017) Targol Kharrom. Our profiles are posted on the AFP website and via Twitter and Facebook.

The Committee members are physically located in Melbourne and Sydney Australia and Santiago, Chile. We hope that, in these challenging times, the obligatory use of technology will bring us closer together and strengthen one of the missions for Architects for Peace as a global organisation.

This year we plan to hold four committee meetings, the next being in May and will be open to members via zoom. We are holding this forum to gain feedback from members on a draft workplan that includes increasing membership involvement, remote/virtual events, partnerships and networks, editorial and public presentations via various platforms.

To start engaging with the membership, and encourage new members to join Architects for Peace, we are holding a competition for a virtual projection project. This will be launched on 1 May 2020 with details via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and the AFP website www.architectsforpeace.org. We will hold a Zoom tutorial with projection artist Yandell Walton in early May, to teach members how to make a simulated projection. This will be recorded and available until the closing date of entries.

Here is an introduction:

A-public Space Projection. A competition/exhibition/intervention.

A-public space = a public space without a public

An urban crisis - public health, ecological, social, political - suspends public space and domesticates public life. Social media attempts to bridge this socio-spatial-temporal breach as a mirror of modern, public space. This requires the post-modern connection of digital and social media to see and be seen.

A-public Space Projection is a simulated public space event sponsored by Architects for Peace with support from the City of Yarra. Architects for Peace (AFP) is a not-for-profit organisation for the professions of the built environment that promotes sustainable urban habitat.

AFP is calling for entries in a projection art competition where images and/or text will be virtually projected onto the façade of the Richmond Town Hall, Victoria, Australia. This non-descript façade could be any neo-classical town hall anywhere. It archetypically represents government and governmentality. In a suspension of public space, the Town Hall is only an image.

Anthony McInneny