AKAD
21 January 2006 - 5 February 2006

AKAD (Academy for Art- and Practice-based Research in Architecture and Design) was founded in 2003 to provoke, promote and discuss critically experimental research by architecture and design. Within the framework of AKAD arrangements have been made of public seminar and exhibitions. AKAD initiates and supports projects, run courses and workshops in collaboration with the PhD programs at the three Schools of Architecture in Sweden - KTH in Stockholm, LTH in Lund, and Chalmers in Gothenburg. The presentation at Lund Konsthall will show mainly four ongoing projects: KRETS (leader Ulrika Karlsson), Reclaiming Space (leader Elizabeth Hatz), Los Angeles Islands (leaders Lars-Henrik Ståhl and Gunnar Sandin) and USIT (leader Catharina Dyrssen). Also the results from one of the courses of AKAD's will be exposed: Writing Architecture (leader Katja Grillner). Se also www.akad.se. The first in a planned series of publications, the newly released 01.AKAD, will be the main catalogue of the exhibition.

Cases to Answer?
Time: 15.00-19.00, Saturday 21 January 2006.
Place: Lund Konsthall
Cases to Answer? is a discussion concerning the works exhibited in the exhibition AKAD (The Academy for Practice-based Research in Architecture and Design) at Lund Konsthall, and their relation to the question of artistic research in architecture and design. An invited panel comprising Michael Biggs (Great Britain), Odile Decq (France) and Andrea Phillips (Great Britain) will be joined by the exhibitors representing AKAD.

Michael Biggs: Michael Biggs is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. His principal research interests are the use of images as bearers of meaning, the relationship of images and texts, and non-linguistic communication via so-called "visual languages" such as airport signs, musical notation, etc. Biggs is a distinguished theoretician of art- and practice-based research and a supervisor of research projects in this field. Every second year, he arranges "The Research into Practice Conference" at the University of Hertfordshire.

Odile Decq: Odile Decq is one of the most renowned architects on the contemporary French architecture scene. Since 1985 she has been investigating the concept of "hyper-tension", of an architecture based on transparency and a dynamical opening of spaces, an architecture in which integration of movement generates tension and complexity. She is professor and the head of the Department of Architecture at the "Ecole Speciale d'Architecture" in Paris. She is a member of the French Academy of Architecture, and in 2001 she was made Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, one of France's highest honours for the arts.

Andrea Phillips: Andrea Phillips is Assistant Director of the Curating Programme, Department of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her research focuses on connections between contemporary art and cultural and socio-political thought. In particular, she is interested in the way that movement, mobility and fluidity are called into use in contemporary art and political philosophy. Andrea Phillips has also worked with issues concerning architecture exhibitions. She is currently completing a book, Walking into Trouble, on contemporary art and pedestrianism.