Notes on City and Architecture

The conference poster, courtesy of  17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos Academy, Art and the Urban Question: Toward a More Equitable City Mel Jordan, Mahsa Alami Fariman, Ahmadreza Hakiminejad  XXXVIII International Colloquium and 3rd Megacities Forum Urban Realities: Produced City, Inhabited City Location: Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico City, Mexico Date: 20-25 January 2025 Organised by:  17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos Synopsis This panel is set to challenge the bureaucratic colonisation of the public sphere and privatisation of public spaces in the UK through the lens of art and urbanism. We believe that art and urban policy agendas in the UK cities turn towards hegemonic neoliberal governance and are often superficially labelled as inclusive and diverse as in practice, there are considerable gaps between state policy objectives and a) the commissioned artistic outcomes and b) grassroot urban interventions and strategies. Urban spaces are critical in our affirmation...

Housing, Open Urban Spaces, and Engagement in Art and Culture (HOUSE) Speakers:  Mahsa Alami Fariman (UCL, Bartlett DPU), Ahmadreza Hakiminejad (Leeds Beckett University), Andy Hewitt (University of Northampton), Ryan Hughes (Coventry  Biennial), Mel Jordan (CU Centre for Postdigital Cultures), Lorenzo Rocha (17, Institute of Critical Studies, Mexico City), Duncan Whitley (ArtSpaceCity, CU Centre for Postdigital Cultures) Date:  17 March 2025 Location:  The Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University  "The ArtSpaceCity group convened the one-day event Housing, Open Urban Spaces, and Engagement in Art and Culture (HOUSE) at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC), Coventry University, on 17 March 2025. The event resulted from a successful ODA funding bid to support a visit to Coventry University by architect and researcher Lorenzo Rocha, Coordinator of Territorial Studies at 17, Institute of Critical Studies, and director of Oficina de Arte, Mexico C...

Nirmal Puwar and Mahsa Alami Fariman examining Kodak Carousel slides in the Coventry Cathedral Archives. Photograph by A. Hakiminejad, March 2025, Coventry, UK. Trauma, Body and Home: An Affective Response to the ‘House of Hope’ Mahsa Alami Fariman, Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, Heba N. Sabboubeh Published by  Mattering Press  (forthcoming) Trauma, Body and Home: An Affective Response to the ‘House of Hope’  is a collaborative piece which responds to a set of forgotten Kodak Carousel slides from the late 1980s, found by Nirmal Puwar in the Coventry Cathedral Archives, documenting an event held at the cathedral connected to the ‘House of Hope’; a peace centre founded in 1978 by Palestinian activist Elias Jabbour. The work is part of the  Hear Here  podcast series and the Experimental Index  within the  British Academy-funded project   Multicultural Experiments in the Civic Life of a Cathedral , led by  Professor Nirmal Puwar  and will be p...

  City, Public Space, and Body: The Embodied Experience of Urban Life Edited by: Mahsa Alami Fariman, Chien Lee, Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, Asma Mehan This book grew out of the international conference  City, Public Space & Body   I co-organised with Mahsa Alami Fariman and Chien Lee in December 2021. The conference  brought together artists, scholars, and practitioners from across the world, in essence, to explore how bodies shape, and are shaped by urban life. The book  will be published with Routledge (Taylor & Francis) in late November 2025, as part of the  Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design Book Series .  Available for pre-order from Routledge  on October 28, 2025.

A fractured face in Nicosia, echoing the scars of the buffer zone. Photograph by Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, August 2024. Nicosia, Cyprus.    Fluid Territories: On Spatial Relations and the Politics of Crossing in Nicosia, Cyprus Mahsa Alami Fariman Ahmadreza Hakiminejad This work  will be presented  at the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2025, as part of  the panel Thriving on Ambiguity – Interstices as Urban Emergence (1): Practices of Emergence , convened by Richard Muller and Varvara Karipidou of the University College London.  Date:  29 August 2025 Time:   14:40 - 16:20 BST Location:  University of Birmingham | Teaching and Learning Building: Room LG03  SYNOPSIS Located at the centre of the system rather than on the periphery and the margin, Nicosia’s buffer zone is a boundary where its ‘incapacity to habitat’ unfolds multiplicity of possibilities and stresses a distributed agency among bodies, things and space...

  Stuart Hall. Photograph by Eamonn McCabe / The New Yorker  Stuart Hall and the City: Exposing Racial Injustice through Creative Contestation , co-organised by Mahsa Alami Fariman and Ahmadreza Hakiminejad, and sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group, is part of the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference , hosted by the University of Birmingham from 26-29 August 2025. The session will take place on 28 August in the Arts Building (LR3) at 16:50. Speakers include  Sonali Dhanpal  (Buell Research & Teaching Fellow, Columbia University) ,   John Clarke (Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, Open University), and  Nick Beech (The Stuart Hall Archive Project, University of Birmingham).  More details are available on the conference website here . Stuart Hall and the City: Exposing Racial Injustice through Creative Contestation Convenors: Mahsa Alami Fariman Ahmadreza Hakiminejad Date: 28 August 2025 Time: 16:50 - 18...

A group of Iranian schoolgirls protest in the classroom while removing their compulsory hijab. Covering her face, one holds a sign which reads: Zan, Zendegi, Azadi [Woman, Life, Freedom]. Photograph: Morning Star, 2023. Woman, Life, Freedom: Revolting Space Invaders in Iran By Mahsa Alami Fariman and Ahmadreza Hakiminejad This article was penned in response to an invitation to write for a Special Issue entitled 'Revisiting Space Invaders'. The article was first published online in  European Journal of Cultural Studies  in August 2024.    Synopsis In marking 20 years since the first publication of Nirmal Puwar's seminal book ' Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place ', we've revisited the notions of invisibility, outsiderness, being ‘out of place’ and ‘space invaders’ within the political geographies of Iran. Furthering the concept, we also tend to pair together ‘space invaders’ with the acts of invading space as political acts of intervention....