The third South of North seminar was held in Copenhagen between 7th – 9th of February 2014. The seminar with the theme “Scandinavian Architects Abroad – Practices and Strategies in Developing Architeture” was hosted by Architecture Sans Frontiéres Denmark and offered a range of activities, including a public seminar in the renowned Arkitekternes Hus in Christianshavn, the launching of brand new book Developing Architecture – Learning From Sierra Leone and an exhibition opening inLeth & Gori, a combined office and exhibition space.
The seminar offered several perspectives to the challenges of development co-operation and the role of the architect in a foreign context. Several guest speakers contributed by sharing their experiences during the lectures and the panel discussion moderated by South-African architect Justine Bell. Jakob Knudsen, representing the experience and know-how of the older generation of architects working with development co-operation, David Garcia, engaged with projects in challenging environments and cross-disciplinary collaboration with the scientific community, and the Product Development Group of the Engineers Without Borders gave fascinating introductions to their architectural practices, methodolody and past and current projects.
Besides the public lecture day, the seminar also included two days of internal workshops, focusing on conretizing the South of North network collaboration and planning for the coming exhibition tour. Much of the discussions revolved around the strategic and structural design for the exhibition concept. The goal is to create a flexible and transportable exhibition structure that can be used to present the different aspects of the South of North collaboration. The exhibition will be designed and produced as a collaboration between the different participating teams, and several production workshops have already been booked for the coming spring, the next one taking place in Oslo/Trondheim already 22th – 26th of March.
