November Talks 2025 will focus on housing

Four November Wednesdays will again belong to the lecture series November Talks at the Faculty of Architecture CTU. With the subtitle “On Housing,” the lectures will feature foreign architects and architecture. This year's series will kick off on November 5 with Mikael Bergquist.

"This year we will focus on the topic of housing, which is becoming increasingly relevant in public debate, especially due to the crisis situation. At the same time, it can easily become an empty concept, a space for manipulation and new speculation. Therefore, the series will address selected European metropolises to look at a range of quality examples,” says Miroslav Pazdera, curator of November Talks.

The speakers are architects and architecture theorists, academics who have long been engaged in the social dimension of architecture and the search for new forms of collective and affordable housing. Mikael Bergquist (Stockholm), Astrid Smitham from the studio Apparata (London), Bernadette Krejs (Vienna), and the collective Lacol (Barcelona) will present their experiences. The lectures will address questions of how architects can engage in the broader political and social debate about designing quality and socially sustainable housing projects.

Mikael Bergquist is an architect and publicist, a graduate of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He leads his own architectural office, focusing on family homes and the renovation of existing buildings. He serves as a studio head at KTH, where he addresses various aspects of housing. He is a curator of exhibitions and books and an author of publications – most recently Centre and Periphery: Five Houses by Mikael Bergquist. He participated in the exhibitions Alternative Histories in London (2019), 100 Day Studio Architecture Foundation (2020), and the summer school Porto Academy (2023). His lecture will present a personal selection of Swedish housing projects from the early 20th century to the present, from large development projects to individual housing.

The second speaker this year will be Astrid Smitham, an architect and academic, co-founder of the London office APPARATA – an architectural, design, and research studio that creates pleasant and adaptable spaces and objects. She focuses on the connection and interplay of material, environmental, and social spheres and addresses issues of social ties, repairs, dematerialization, and changing typologies. The studio's work has received numerous awards, including the RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing and the Civic Trust Award, and has been nominated for the Stirling Prize and European Collective Housing Award. Astrid teaches architecture at Kingston University and the Architectural Association. Her lecture will address the housing crisis in the United Kingdom, which requires a change in approach to architecture – one that is more social, adaptable, and resilient to climate change.

On the third November Wednesday, Bernadette Krejs, an architect and senior research fellow at the Research Institute for Housing and Design at the Vienna University of Technology, will present. Her work operates in the interdisciplinary research field between architecture, housing, and visual culture. In her research, she focuses on the media representation of housing through digital platforms. She is a co-founder of the international doctoral program New Social Housing, an editor, and author of several books – Changing Spatial Practices (2025), Vienna: The End of Housing (as a Typology) (2024), Instagram-Wohnen (2024). Her work has been published as part of various exhibitions. She is a member of the Margarete Schütte Lihotzky project and LINA – European Architecture Platform, a co-founder of the queer feminist collective Claiming*Spaces, and an activist research practice called Palace of Un/Learning. The lecture Housing Otherwise will explore how architecture based on empathy, solidarity, and circularity can contribute to fairer forms of housing in times of climate and social crisis. Using Vienna as a case study, it will seek new approaches to sharing and communal living.

This year's series will conclude with the collective Lacol – an architectural practice based in Barcelona. The studio has received several awards, including the Mies van der Rohe Award 2022 in the Emerging category, and has been selected for the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016, 2021), Buenos Aires (2017), and San Sebastián (2019). The La Borda project also received the European Award for Collective Housing and was recognized at the European Responsible Housing Awards and World Habitat Award. In their lecture, they will focus on cooperative housing projects as a framework for experimenting with the construction of collective housing. Using examples from Barcelona and Catalonia, they will illustrate how the new model of cooperativism has become a foundation for alternative and innovative architectural solutions.

November Talks will take place on four Wednesdays starting from November 5, always at 6:30 PM – November 5 (Mikael Bergquist), November 12 (Astrid Smitham, APPARATA), November 19 (Bernadette Krejs), and November 26 (Lacol) – in lecture hall 155 Gočár, Faculty of Architecture CTU, Thákurova 9, Prague 6.

Lectures in English are intended for the general public, entry is free, and the venue is wheelchair accessible. The November Talks series has been supported by the Sto Foundation since 2006 and takes place annually at six selected European schools of architecture. This year, the lecture series is an accredited educational event of the lifelong learning system of the Czech Chamber of Architects (ČKA).