IN FOCUS: RESEARCH was a sold-out event curated by The World Around and Future Observatory which took place on March 16, 2024 in London. We’ve been overjoyed by the response so far. “I left feeling energized and hopeful, change is coming”—@adrianlahoud

We’ll be posting videos from the event to The World Around’s website and YouTube channel over the next two weeks, so follow our YouTube channel for updates and notifications.

In front of a packed auditorium at the Design Museum as well as hundreds watching the livestream hosted in partnership with Dezeen, our incredible speakers each presented the ways in which research not only informs their practices, but provides the driving force for some of the most important and groundbreaking work in and around the field of architecture today.

Indy Johar set the tone by providing a urgent call to action for architects and practitioners across the creative industries to focus their attention on the climate crisis. Several of our speakers’ presentations revolved around water research: Henk Ovink, Feifei Zhou, Adrian Lahoud, and Julia King all showed how this commodity is increasingly becoming both precious and destructive, and offered insights into how they’re each using research to better understand, manage, distribute, and adapt to our changing relationship to water in all forms.

In a video interview produced by The World Around, Sammy Baloji described his experience growing up in post-colonial DRC and how this landscape informed his artistic practice. Meanwhile, Natsai Audrey Chieza showcased multiple applications of her ongoing work with synthetic biology, while Eyal Weizman gave a sobering, insightful and poignant analysis of his firm Forensic Architecture’s recent research.

In Focus: Research was presented by The World Around and Future Observatory at the Design Museum in London on Saturday, March 16, 2024. The event was hosted in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) — part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — and The World Around Global Cultural Partner Fondation Cartier.

Download the full event program here:
https://theworldaround.com/program/