Fragile Systems Conference
Fragile systems are the interconnections between materials, bodies, technologies, and spaces that are not fixed or permanent, but rather ephemeral and constantly evolving. They expose their own vulnerability, whether through the surfaces of bodies and materials, craft-based technologies often pushed to the margins, or architectural structures designed to change over time. It is precisely this softness, instability, and openness to transformation that offer new ways of rethinking architecture and our relationship to the world in times of uncertainty.
Lecture room H135
Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Hviezdoslavovo námestie 18
Program:
14:00 – 14:15 Introduction (Danica Pišteková (AFAD))
14:15 – 15:00 Davor Ereš, Jelena Mitrović - Unraveling the Architectural Exhibition Form: Tracing Practices Across Time, Materiality, and Disciplines
15:00 – 15:40 Michelle Howard - Ignored Technology: The Carrier Bag Revolution, Adam Hudec-Epidermitecture: A Socio-material Investigation of Biopatina on the Outer Surfaces of Built Environments
15:45 – 16:25 Raquel Buj - Experimental Skins: New Material Narratives
16:35 – 17:20: Fragile systems panel discussion (moderated by Danica Pišteková and Tomáš Tholt)
17:20 – 18:00: Drinks, networking
Michelle Howard bio:
Michelle Howard is a social ecological architect, professor, author, researcher, and activist. She is a Professor of art and architecture and Head of the Platform for Construction, Materials and Technology at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. Her way of teaching and learning resolutely embraces the heuristic path of empirical experimentation. Her work seeks to reactivate and make visible mutual conditions and dependencies of human and non-human life.
Ignored Technology: The Carrier Bag Revolution
For over than a decade, Professor Michelle Howard has championed the study of ignored technology—the profound skills and knowledge historically associated with women and other anomalies. This term describes all those whose bodies, needs, and talents have been overlooked by a patriarchal system that often dismisses their contributions as non-technical or merely decorative. This inclusive view also embraces men who have operated outside the patriarchal model. In this lecture, she invites us to imagine an alternate future: What direction would technology have taken if these essential, collaborative skills had been centred from the start?
Raquel Buj bio:
Raquel Buj is an architect, artist, and designer based in Madrid who works under the name Buj Studio, a material experimentation laboratory where she explores the possibilities of biomaterials, biofabrication, craftsmanship, and digital manufacturing to create envelopes conceived as second skins. She approaches her bodily and spatial pieces through the construction of new, more sensitive material narratives in a world affected by the climate crisis.
Experimental Skins: New Material Narratives
This session brings us closer to creation through material experimentation. Working from the source, we can rethink our relationship with the environment and with others, imagining new narratives that are more sensitive to what is already there, and to what we do not yet see. Through some of the works developed at Buj Studio, we will position ourselves on the boundary between disciplines — between body and space, craftsmanship and technology, materialities and processes.
Davor Ereš bio:
Davor Ereš is an architect and researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and founder of Poligon Studio. His work spans design, teaching, and research, focusing on learning through architecture, the (post)production of architecture and questions of contemporaneity. He is a visiting teacher at the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, Paris, and curated the Serbian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale, Unraveling: New Spaces.
Jelena Mitrović bio:
Jelena Mitrović is the founder of Poligon Studio and an assistant professor at Union–Nikola Tesla University, as well as an external associate at MITarh Studio in Belgrade. Her theoretical research focuses on the theory of architectural practice, particularly the modernist architect’s position in contemporary practice. She has participated in international exhibitions and co-authored the Serbian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale, Unraveling: New Spaces.
Unraveling the Architectural Exhibition Form: Tracing Practices Across Time, Materiality, and Disciplines
The lecture presents Unraveling: New Spaces, the Serbian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, as a case study in temporality, energy, and materiality as evolving architectural form. The project explores how architecture can be reimagined through cycles of composition and decomposition, circularity, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Emphasising the “learning hand” as both concept and tool, it highlights tactile and temporal dimensions of form-making. By juxtaposing knitting as a generative skill with wool as a hybrid medium, Unraveling proposes a shift from static form to dynamic process—towards a materially grounded, energy-aware, and inclusive vision of architecture.
The project was supported by the Cultural and Educational Grant Agency (KEGA) of The Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic – KEGA 005VŠVU-4/2023 (Digitálna telesnosť/Digital Physicality). and partners from UMPRUM and AKBILD - under the Ignored Technology research project supported by ERASMUS+ | Cooperation Partnerships KA2 (2025-1-AT01-KA220-HED-000357512)