January 19–March 9, 2026, 6:30pm
London London WC1H 0QB
United Kingdom
Hours: Monday–Friday 7am–10pm
Saturday–Sunday 9am–6pm
T +44 20 3549 5700
architectureoffice@ucl.ac.uk
The Bartlett School of Architecture's flagship seminar series, CRUNCH, continues its exploration of “imminence” through seven events examining how architecture responds to urgent global challenges.
This term's programme features a diverse lineup of practitioners, artists and scholars, including 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Liu Jiakun, DAAR founders Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, V&A East Director Gus Casely-Hayford, and leading academics from Columbia GSAPP, UC Santa Barbara and Rhode Island School of Design.
CRUNCH is curated by the school's Co-Directors of Public Programming, Albert Brenchat-Aguilar and Déborah López Lobato.
Please note: CRUNCH takes place from 6:30–8pm on Mondays at the Bartlett School of Architecture, 22 Gordon Street, London, unless otherwise stated. The events are free to attend but ticketed. Early registration is advised.
The Metabolic Home
January 19, 2026, 6:30–8pm
Lydia Kallipoliti examines how the home can become a test bed for resource recirculation, challenging the extractive logic of the built environment, with responses from Barbara Penner.
ON LAND
January 26, 2026, 6:30–8pm
2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Liu Jiakun discusses his architectural practice, exploring symbiosis with nature, responsiveness to local conditions, spiritual continuity with tradition and the interplay of collective and individual memory.
Learning Through Displacement: Pedagogies for the Colonial Present
February 9, 2026, 6:30–8pm
DAAR founders Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti examine how collective learning becomes a form of pedagogical and political re-existence in the face of genocide and erasure, drawing from two decades of work across sites of exile and control.
The Architecture of Imminence
February 23, 2026, 6:30–8pm
Swati Chattopadhyay draws on Bengal's flood-prone riverine landscape to reimagine the architecture of imminence, challenging the prejudice of permanence that defines architectural history and practice.
Imminent Archives: Expanding Architecture's Canon
March 2, 2026, 6:30–8pm
Gus Casely-Hayford explores V&A East Storehouse—a working museum store designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro—as a radical architectural innovation that reimagines the archive as a site for counter-narratives, contested histories and collective memory-making.
Depth and Belonging
March 9, 2026, 6:30–8pm
Ijlal Muzaffar explores how depth—through silt, dust and bodies—reveals hidden connections between land and belonging in colonial Sindh, drawing on stories of British canal-building in nineteenth-century Pakistan, village displacement and cycles of rebellion.
