ArchiLectures | Darko Radovic

This lecture introduces the work in and around co+labo Radović, an architecture and urban design laboratory based at Keio University, Tokyo. co+labo is a rare example of Research Laboratory at the major Japanese University with a stranger at its helm. As a truly cross-cultural environment, co+labo opens new questions and attempts to address the topics such as globalisation, cultural and disciplinary otherness, boundaries, territories, exclusion and inclusion, in architecture and urban design.
Since 2009, co+labo has evolved into a network (former+current students, members+associates, colleagues+friends) celebrating that plus, the binding, collaborative symbol from our logo. Henry Lefebvre, the foundational thinker behind the ethos and praxis of co+labo, wrote about “the dignity of bearing the + sign, that of joy, happiness, enjoyment, of sensuality – the sign of life”, thus bringing together, in a single sentence, many of the key-words which define the aims of our laboratory. For us, as in Lefebvre’s theory of space, “architectural practices are to be conceptualized as transversal, that is to say cutting across ontological categories and contributing to all phases of research, programming, designing, construction, and the continuous appropriation of buildings.”

In this lecture at Politecnico di Milano, the story of co+labo provides the framework for discussion of the philosophy framing the co+labo way and excursions into our recent, current and forthcoming education, research and design-research adventures in the fields of architecture and urban design.

Darko Radović is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Keio University, a founding co-Director of IKI – International Keio Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, and Visiting Professor at the United Nations University, Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, Tokyo. In 2017, he is a Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano.

Darko has taught, researched and practiced architecture and urbanism in Europe, Australia and Asia. His research in architecture and urbanism and, consequently focuses at the nexus between environmental and cultural sustainability and situations where architecture and urban design overlap. His research books include Green City (2005, Routledge/UNSW Press; with Low, Gleeson, Green); Urbophilia (2007, University of Belgrade, PAPS publishers), Cross-Cultural Urban Design (2007, Routledge, with Bull, Boontharm, Parin, Tapie), Another Tokyo (2008, University of Tokyo and ichii Shobou), eco-urbanity (2009, Routledge), small Tokyo (2012, Flick Studio and IKI, ed. with Boontharm), The Split Case: Density, Intensity, Resilience (2012, Flick Studio and IKI, ed. with Boontharm, Kuma and Grgić), Intensities in Ten Cities (2013, ed.), Tokyo derive (2013, ed.), Subjectivities in Investigations of the Urban: Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore (2014) and In the Search of Urban Quality (with D. Boontharm).

University:
Keio University, Tokyo, Japan