Keynote ‘An Architecture of Nature’ at Institute for Barcelona’s Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC)
Alison Brooks delivered a keynote lecture exploring how architecture can serve as a bridge between cultural memory and a brighter, more sustainable future.
Titled ‘An Architecture of Nature,’ the lecture brought together the themes of social inclusivity, sculptural design language and sustainable material innovation before an engaged audience at the IAAC’s Barcelona Sant Martí campus.
The event served as the curtain-raiser to the Barcelona International Architecture Film Festival (BARQ), coinciding with the world premiere of ‘Forested Future’ – a compelling 90-minute documentary by filmmaker Petr Krejčí and the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), with support from Labóh. The film traces Brooks’ evolving philosophy on timber, which she views as more than merely a building material, but as a profound medium with a spiritual connection.
This perspective has been shaped by Brooks’ unique dual Canadian-European education and her deepening engagement with North American indigenous worldviews that understand context as simultaneously physical, cultural and spiritual. As the IAAC noted, “Throughout her lecture, Brooks reflected on how buildings can embody both individual and collective narratives, using form and materiality to express identity and belonging.”
Her projects – from the Cohen Quadrangle Exeter College at Oxford University to the Cadence courtyard-towers at London’s King’s Cross, and The Smile, centrepiece of the London Design Festival – demonstrate what IAAC described as “an architecture that is both poetic and pragmatic, deeply rooted in place while open to experimentation.” Brooks’ work continues to offer a source of optimism, showing how timber’s environmental benefits and structural capabilities can be elevated to create an architecture that reconnects urban dwellers with the natural world.
The institute summarised the evening’s significance: “By engaging with themes of material innovation, environmental responsibility and architectural expression, Alison Brooks offered IAAC’s students and guests a vision of design that connects human experience with the broader ecologies that sustain it – an architecture not only of nature, but for nature.”
↳ Read more on Alison’s IAAC lecture here.
Photos courtesy of the IAAC
