New project on macro-murals

In following nine month I'll be working as a Junior Core Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study CEU on the project "The Politics of Designing Poverty in a Contemporary Globalised World: A Study of Macro-Murals in Colombia". For more info: https://ias.ceu.edu/people/petr-vasat.

Project annotation

The project explores the global operation of social interventions that tackle urban poverty. Various schools, collectives and studios use architecture, art or design to help poor communities of the global South through improving their material environment, but this trend is visible in the global North, too. In this, macro-murals represent the most ambitious and visible form. However, regardless of their positive or negative impacts, interventions, including macro-murals, are very often locally decontextualised and isolated from the urban politics that make poverty. As a result, they may not eliminate poverty, but rather redesign it. The project will compare several macro-murals in Colombia to establish a novel understanding of how macro-murals globally emerge and travel, how they are locally implemented and with what impact. Rather than fully embracing or rejecting macro-murals, the project inquires why they are adopted and whether the context of adoption determines their outcomes.