We’re super chuffed to have been invited for a panel discussion organized by Queer Community Club (QCC) at Internasjonalen in Oslo about queer(ing) architecture and zine making to mark the launch of QCC’s first zine. Thank you to Mathias Sagvik for the invitation! (Photo by QCC)

After one long year, the day has come. Today we received the newsletter of the Canadian Centre for Architecture announcing that our long-awaited first article of a web series of 3 was finally published. We’re utterly excited (and a bit relieved) to share with you the work we’ve been doing, visiting 3 cities and talking to 5 inspiring voices about queerness in architectural practice. It started in Stockholm back in Spring 2022 with artist, architect and researcher Katarina Bonnevier, representing MYCKET. Thank you to Andrew Scheinman and the CCA staff, especially Albert and Isadora, for your guidance throughout this journey. Read here (in French and English) “Stockholm: The Excess of Meaning and the Labour of Joy in a Queer Practice of Architecture”.

Happy Tet! Chuc mung nam moi! Exutoire are setting up office in Vietnam for a while to recharge from a busy 2022. Between some much needed family time, we keep busy with site visits, contractor meetings, material sourcing, office location scouting, research and writing, and all sorts of celebration of course. We wish you all the best for Quy Mao 2023, the year of the cat!

Son wrote a piece for the German architecture magazine Bauwelt on behalf of Safe Space Collective. "Keine Zeit für Gleichgültigkeit" was published in Stadtbauwelt 26.2022: Stadt und Rassismus last December. It acted as an epilogue for the Safe Space project. Red the English version, "No Time to Not Care: Refuturing Architecture," here.

A full semester of public programming at AHO came to an end with the last discussion of the OAT Academy series, which included lectures and roundtables with researchers and practitioners about architecture in relation to material circularity as well as curatorial and editorial practices. Thanks to Céline, Patricia, César, Denes, Emmanuelle & Philibert, Emile, Andrea, Teresa, Ophélie, James, Afaina, Victoria, Tatiana, Sophie & Carlo, Leonard, and Mari for their incredible contributions. You all made it one of the most memorable moments of the year for us. The recordings can be viewed here. (Photo by Jan Khür)

We’re doing a second week-long workshop with the Dissident Publics group of artists, in Bergen this time. It was hosted at our collaborators NOGOODS’ space (co-curators of the project) and included an evening lecture “On Performative Spatialities” by Nagy Makhlouf, in collaboration with the Bergen School of Architecture (BAS). Over 7 days, informed by queer methodologies, we spent time learning about the group members’ diverse practices through workshops and discussions to then establish a collective language/agenda. And as always, thanks to everyone and ROM for the collective effort!

Thanks to a gracious invitation from Adrià Carbonell, we were lucky to join this year’s National Meeting on Equality and Urban Justice organized by the Applied Urban Design research group at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, School of Architecture in Stockholm. It’s always a pleasure to share insights on the genesis and findings of Safe Space. Thank you also to Alejandra for the visit of the school and for letting us work in the faculty’s meeting room.

We’re so thrilled to receive a Silver prize at Årets vakreste Bøker for the Safe Space Zine in the Series category. We want to thank Grafill and this year’s jury for this award. We’re touched by how the jury had recognized the “unmistakable” concept and character of the fanzine series that manifested through a “rough yet well-composed design” to convey political messages. Go have a look at the exhibition of this year’s winners at Grafill in Oslo, 3–20 November. Cheers to more wholehearted projects like this one, and more just representation of marginalized voices and discourses. (Video still courtesy of Grafill)

We celebrated the end of a fantastic workshop week for the OAT Academy with a magical evening! We were proud to see such an event in an architecture school, bringing in some much needed queerness and joy. A heartfelt thank you to Tine Semb, the Karmaklubb* team and all the performers and artists for such a memorable night! Thank you to the students and the faculty members: María, Rosie, Patricia, Biljana, Ole, Adrià, Alejandra, Nikola, and Nuria; and to the workshop guests: Jack, Nico, Jos, Anna Ulrikke, Matthew, Sareh, Armelle, Son, Marie, and Benjamin. Special thanks also to the student assistants: Karoline, Changkun, Celine and others; and to the photographers Jan and Julie.

We’re honored to have been invited to moderate a discussion on queer architecture with Joel Sanders (architect, writer and professor at the Yale School of Architecture) following his lecture at the National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo. This event is part of the live program for the exhibition “Coming Into Community” connected to the Queer Cultural Year and the Oslo Architecture Triennale. A warm thank you to Victoria Bugge Øye, Charlotte McInnes and Karianne Ommundsen for this very special invitation and a very timely exhibition. Watch the recording here. (Video still courtesy of Nasjonalmuseet)

Finally, the Academy has started! After 9 months of preparation, students from all over Europe just arrived at AHO for the Oslo Architecture Triennale OAT Academy 2022 titled “(RE)acting/(EN)acting”. The program of this year’s edition is curated and coordinated by Paul-Antoine Lucas. The main week-long workshop-based event gathered more than 100 students and faculty members from 7 architecture schools across Europe (Sandberg Instituut, KU Leuven, TU Graz, NTNU, AHO, KTH, Aarhus School of Architecture) and many Oslo-based activists, designers and architects around the theme of "Collective Dissidence: Reclaiming the Neighborhood". Visual concept and design by Bui Quy Son.

We’re excited for the launch of the AHO Guest Lecture Series Fall 2022, starting with a talk from Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop. The Fall program was organized by Paul-Antoine Lucas and Hanna Birkeland Bergh. It features discussion sessions curated by Paul-Antoine for the OAT Academy 2022, and wonderful graphic identity and poster designs by the one and only Bui Quy Son! Watch the recording of the first lecture here.

Son designed a big poster (70x100cm) for the Oslo Architects’ Association’s Fall 2022 program of activities. The full program of lectures, workshops and film screenings was revealed during a lovely launch evening at Arkitektenes hus, followed by a presentation of young emerging practices in Oslo. Thank you to the program coordinator Espen Heggertveit for this cute invitation!

As part of our guest curator residency at ROM in Oslo, we officially launched our co-curation and co-creation project "Dissident Publics: Future Artefacts of Queer Methodologies'' last week. It was amazing to meet with our wonderful collaborators over 5 days of workshop. Shout-outs to the wonderful ROM director Gjertrud Steinsvåg, to our co-curators Maike Statz and Danja Burchard, and to the collaborating artists and architects Mahé Cordier-Jouanne, Léa Brami, Jan Trinh, Liene Pavlovska, and Lexie Owen. Thank you to the generous guests that intervened throughout the week: María Mazzanti, Jean Makhlouta, Alexander Auris, Eliot Moleba, Saúl García-López, and Teo Ala-Ruona.

Kicking off another semester at AHO! The 8th edition of the In Transit Studio focuses on Bucharest as a key transit and reception place in Europe within the current Ukrainian refugee crisis. For the next 4 months, a group of 17 students will draw proposals for collective centers in the Romanian capital. The course is taught by Håvard Breivik-Khan and Paul-Antoine Lucas.

After a hectic, busy and exciting start of the year, we took some well-deserved work-cation time in Vietnam. It was an opportunity to conduct some research, meet with fellow practitioners, but also to be with family and to disconnect ♡

It’s a wrap! Congratulations and sincere thanks to our brilliant students and co-teacher Hanna Birkeland Bergh this semester. We’re proud of you and grateful for our time together. AHO Works exhibition is open until June 12! (Photo by Jonas Løland)

Our final review for "Designing Collectivity, Designing Politically" with guests Meriem Chabani (New South), Dominique Hauderowicz (dominique+serena), and Tanja Lie (Lie Øyen arkitekter) is coming up this Friday 3 June. We hereby express our gratitude towards all the guests and contributors of the studio throughout the past 5 months: Daniel Abraha (Atelier Abraha Achermann), Miguel Hernández Quintanilla, Olaf Grawert (b+), Sam Chermayeff, and Claudio Schneider (Schneider Türtscher).

Exutoire went to Brussels to lecture at KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture. The talk "(De)Constructing Exutoire" focused on the genesis and functioning of Exutoire as a queer practice of architecture. Thanks Alexander Auris for inviting us to take part in your research and elective course "Altering Practices for Urban Inclusion". (Photo by Alexander Auris)

Son held a lecture and partook in teaching a workshop on the perspectival illustration with diploma students of the MA Spatial Design programme at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. The lecture titled "Representation in Representation" tackled different meanings of representation in architecture, from media of visualisation to sociopolitical representation enabled by the built environment. Shoutouts to Nicholas Thomas Lee for this wonderful invitation.

Welcome to the public lecture series linked to the Master's studio "Designing Collectivity, Designing Politically" we're organizing at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Between January and March, we will host 5 conversations with European architects, researchers and activists around the questions of cooperative housing and urban inclusivity: Irina Davidovici, Clara Triviño Massó (Sostre Cívic), Cristina Gamboa (Lacol), Ole Pedersen and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. The lectures will be hybrid (online/in person); Zoom links to follow.

We started teaching our own Master's studio with fellow architect and teacher Hanna Birkeland Bergh at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design—woohoo! Together with 15 students and an exciting line-up of guests, we are delving into not-for-profit housing and new forms of collective living. Looking so much forward to sharing with you the progress of this collective investigation.

We’re utterly excited to become Guest Curators in Residence at ROM for kunst og arkitektur for a 2-year period 2022–2023. Our research project on "a queer practice of architecture" started with Safe Space (2020–2021). Thanks to ROM's director Gjertrud Steinsvåg's initiative and the support of the Arts Council Norway through the Gjesteopphold grant, we will now have a platform to expand on the themes of queer and queering architecture and public space. (Photo by Solène Moscato)

We just finished teaching a 2-week workshop on physical model making as a tool of design and representation for master's students in Architecture and Landscape Architecture at AHO's In Transit Studio. We worked with 12 students, guiding them toward creating model pictures that speak for the intended material, textural and atmospheric qualities of their projects. The workshop was led by Bui Quy Son, together with Paul-Antoine Lucas and Håvard Breivik-Khan.

Safe Space Collective couldn't be happier to release the Safe Space Zine series which we started working on in May this year. It gathered a total number of 48 contributors (texts, illustrations, conversations) around 6 issues expanding the views on diversity and representation in architecture. Son and Paul-Antoine, together with Armelle Breuil, edited and designed the publications. Warmest thanks to everyone who participated and who came to celebrate with us during the Launch Party at ROM for kunst og arkitektur! (Photo by Franz Holtschlag)

8 episodes of the Safe Space podcast series have all been released and are now available on all podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and others. Paul-Antoine and Son took part in curating, moderating and editing the conversations, including "The vocabulary of representation", "The right to housing" and "A queer practice of architecture". Thanks to our host ROM for kunst og arkitektur, our sound engineer Xavier Guinois, musicians Fleur bleu.e who created Safe Space's beautifully hopeful jingle, the 20 speakers as well as the people and institutions who supported us during the making of the podcast. Headphones on!

We were pleased to present a new publication for the In Transit Studio which we co-edited (with Håvard Breivik-Khan and Tone Selmer-Olsen) and designed in Spring 2021, among a small crowd of students and teachers at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Paul-Antoine is part of the teaching team at AHO as Assistant Professor this semester for the In Transit Studio VII titled "The Neighborhood Project" together with Håvard Breivik-Khan and Tone Selmer-Olsen. The studio is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2022 program. Stay tuned!

Our curatorial proposal "A Queer Practice of Architecture" was one of the three finalists of the Emerging Curator Residency Program 2021-2022 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. We were selected and guided by the CCA’s curatorial team during this Spring-Summer, and have now completed the mentorship phase. More soon!

"Even if queerness is not a location, it is still directly linked to the experience of space. So how do we go about queering space?"—Son and Paul-Antoine, as part of Safe Space Collective, joined Pride Art curator Frederick Nathanael and Martine Johansen from MELK and Et skeivt kultursenter (project for a queer art and culture center in Oslo) to talk about the possibilities of a queer architecture. (Video still courtesy of et skeivt kultursenter)

Safe Space Collective (Bui Quy Son, Paul-Antoine Lucas and Armelle Breuil) start their five-week residency and exhibition at the Oslo gallery ROM for kunst og arkitektur. During this period of time, they will record eight conversations which will then be released as a podcast series in Fall 2021, while continuing to conduct their exploratory research on the meaning of diversity and representation in the field of architecture in Norway. The exhibition is set to close on June 6, 2021.

Paul-Antoine and Son gave a lecture titled "Models, models, models – The practice of making – A practice in the making" for third-year architecture students at the "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest. We're extremely grateful for the invitation and warm welcome from Silvia Diaconu, Prof. Mihaela Pelteacu and all the students.

Son and Paul-Antoine, as part of the Safe Space Collective, signed a contract with ROM for kunst og arkitektur for a podcast series, a residency and an exhibition, set to take place at the gallery from May 3 to June 6, 2021. We're truly looking forward to this opportunity.

Kick-off of the Spring 2021 semester studio "Out of House - Nationaltheatret" at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape (AHO). Paul-Antoine is teaching with Johanne Borthne and Gro Bonesmo. Read the brief here.

Paul-Antoine started to teach at AHO as Assistant Professor for the In Transit Studio titled "Contingency City" together with Håvard Breivik and Tone Selmer-Olsen. Have a look at the students' work at the AHO Works Exhibition.