Albena Yaneva
Architectural Materials in the New Climatic Regime
29 Jan 2026
6:45 pm
Bauhaus Building
What new materials, practices and experimental tactics will be at stake in the laboratory of the architect in the new climatic regime? How can we enable construction based on low carbon? Could renewable plant and earth materials with circular life cycles be the solution? What will be the new role ascribed to architects if they are no longer consumers of materials taken from the shelf, but instead active agents in these cycles of material experimentation? How will this alter the wider ecology of architectural and construction industries? The lecture will engage with these questions through the story of an old Venetian material obscured by myths and local cultural legends – the briccola (dolphin). Made of oak poles, numbered and displaying speed limit signs, these objects designate the waterways and aid navigation in the Venice lagoon. Tracing the processes of production, replacement, salvage and reuse of dolphins, and in the wake of key controversies, I shall demonstrate the extent to which even traditional materials have become objects of contestation. Mobilising a vast, heterogenous network of actors, from institutions such as the Venice Water Authority through craftsmen, pres ervationists and marine biologists to naval shipworms and aquatic birds, dolphins take on a pragmatic reality that outlives their semiotic definition. Chalenging the implausible philosophy of history in which objects remain mute and immobile, the story of the dolphin is at the foreground of a history extending to things. It makes us rethink the complex trade-off between the ecological and social impact of both traditional extractivist methods and new material experimentation.
