Chi esce entra Catalog Presentation and Panel Discussion “Impossible Architecture: On Restoring Buildings and Cultural Memory”

Impossible Architecture: On Restoring Buildings and Cultural Memory

“Impossible Architecture” names practices that simultaneously inhabit, suspend, and reconfigure a building’s meanings, unsettling architectural historiography, briefs, timelines, and authorship. This panel centres such practices, treating inhabitation, care, and politics as constitutive rather than incidental. Moving beyond monument-centered preservation and restoration, the panellists present projects in which living within sites of repair unsettles conventional architectural research and practice. In these cases, residents and architects co-occupy buildings in transformation, recognising modes of dwelling that exceed standard frameworks of design and delivery. Grounded in decolonial, feminist, and queer approaches, the discussion reimagines the social, cultural, and political meanings of the interim, the scaffolded present of restoration, and the ephemeral practices that take root there. Rather than aiming at finished monuments alone, we ask how repair can generate social infrastructure, redistribute expertise, and extend care, opening durable possibilities precisely through transitory inhabitation.

Panel as part of the exhibition “Chi entra esce” with

Anna Puigjaner, architect, founder of MAIO, Barcelona, and Professor at the Chair of Architecture and Care, ETH Zurich

Yousef Taha يوسف طه, Architect and restorer at RIWAQ – Centre for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah

Facundo Revuelta, architect, activist and Lecturer at the Design and Gender Studio, University of Buenos Aires

Moderated by HE Shen 何珅, artist, researcher, scientific assistant at Chair of Architecture and Care, ETH Zurich

Pre-registration obligatory:
Catalog presentation and Panel 30.10.2025, 5:00 pm | Exhibition: Chi esce entra (30. Oktober 2025) · Events (Indico)

Scientific Organization: Simon Würsten Marin, curator of the exhibition Chi esce entra

_{Image: Exhibition view showing Faster than an Erection by Reba Maybury, Untitled (L+R) by Larry Johnson and Erected by Querformat. Kino Roland curated by Fredi Fischli, Niels Olsen and Querformat, October 15–November 3, 2022, Nexpo – la nouvelle Expo. Photograph by Nelly Rodriguez.}