New exhibition explores how architecture shapes the air we breathe

In this October issue of ROUX dedicated to all kinds of spectral, ghostly things, we introduce a local discussion about the most haunting of the elements – air. We also attempt to answer a question: What do architecture students
of the university do, actually?

In September, the Master in Architecture at the University of Luxembourg opened the design studio Worlding Airs. Led by Dr. Marija Marić, Dr. César Reyes Nájera, and doctoral researcher Kristina Shatokhina, the studio invites first-semester architecture students to investigate air as an environment, a medium, and a shared commons.

Worlding Airs builds on Worlding Soils (2023), a previous architecture studio led by Marija Marić, César Reyes Nájera, and David Peleman. This new iteration extends their research on the politics of elements into the aerial realm, rethinking architecture’s relationship to life’s most ephemeral medium and imagining cities where care for air is inseparable from how we build and inhabit spaces.

© Inès Hosni, Julianne Sedan / Roux Magazine

Imagine the air we breathe as an archive of things:

the fine dust that may soon settle on skin

the smell of whatever that nasty thing is

particulate matter from construction sites

freshly-baked croissants

emissions from highways

perfume and sweat in the morning bus

smoke from a bonfire

voices carried through open windows

pollen, spores, and microscopic seeds

the metallic tang of old steel

tear gas from a protest

carbon from forests burning elsewhere

laughter; contagious coughs!…

You begin to notice that air is the medium of harm, but also of connection: the medium through which ideas and revolts circulate. Worlding Airs asks: what might it mean to think air as a site of dwelling, politics, or justice? Drawing from critical theory, architectural history, queer ecology, and feminist thought, students explore the “forgetting of air” in Western architectural discourse, “worlding” it as a subject of architectural research and speculation.

Luxembourg’s landscapes provide the site for these enquiries. From Belval, a former steel industry site now undergoing transformation, to borderland highways polluted with daily commuter flows, to urban heat islands, air is never neutral. Architectural students are encouraged to investigate these sites, working on interventions that might reimagine current systemic distributions of care and resources.

© Inès Hosni, Julianne Sedan / Roux Magazine

The studio is organized in three phases. Students begin by mapping out the landscape of their enquiries and translating their first findings into research questions. Mid-semester, they present proposals that imagine interventions at multiple scales – urban, architectural, infrastructural – addressing air as a shared, living medium. By the semester’s end, their work will take material form in models, drawings, textiles, video, and installations, culminating in a public exhibition at Casino Display Luxembourg. This exhibition will become a stage for a local encounter with architecture that does not simply “creates space,” but inhabits and reclaims the invisible flows around us.

Since September, Casino Display has been hosting a series of public lectures as part of institutional collaboration. Researchers and practitioners such as Nerea Calvillo, Olga Subirós, Sam Erpelding, Elise Misao Hunchuk are presenting their work which will extend the studio’s enquiries into the imaginaries and politics of air and the role of elements in contemporary spatial practice.

Roux Magazine

Roux Magazine is made by students at the University of Luxembourg. We love their work, so we decided to team up with them and bring some of their articles to our audience as well. You can find all of their issues on Issuu.