COMMON(S): Lecture Series 2026–27

raumlaborberlin is a collective of nine architects, artists, performers, inventors, and curators founded in 1999, whose work is rooted in an expanded understanding of architecture as Urban Practice. Their situational and collaborative approach focuses on the open production of space through interdisciplinary experimentation and engagement with communities. The lecture will be held by Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, one of its members and a performing architect whose practice bridges architecture, urban arts, and environmental advocacy, promoting non-extractive and transdisciplinary ways of designing and inhabiting the built environment. He co-founded the Floating University in Berlin in 2018, has held professorships at leading European art and architecture schools, and, together with raumlaborberlin, has exhibited internationally at institutions and events including MoMA, Manifesta, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and numerous cultural festivals, receiving the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale for Instances of Urban Practice / Floating University.

*Post-talk cocktails included

Keller Easterling is a designer, writer and the Enid Storm Dwyer Professor of Architecture at Yale. Her forthcoming book, Your Land tells the story of land activism in the US after the Civil Rights Movement. Other books include, Medium Design (Verso 2021), Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), Subtraction (Sternberg, 2014), Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America (MIT, 1999). Easterling is also the co-author (with Richard Prelinger) of Call it Home, a laserdisc/DVD history of US suburbia from 1934-1960.Easterling lectures and exhibits internationally. Her research and writing was included in the 2014 and 2018 Venice Biennales. Easterling is a 2019 United States Artist in Architecture and Design and the 2026 recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture.

*Post-talk cocktails included

Lacol is a non-profit architects' cooperative founded in 2014 in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona. It works to create community infrastructure that fosters more sustainable living, using architecture, cooperativism, and participatory processes as tools for an eco-social transition. Organized through a horizontal working structure, the firm’s practice integrates architecture, housing policy, energy transition, and construction management, blurring disciplinary boundaries to develop a cross-cutting, participatory approach. Born from a desire to combine architectural practice with political reflection and commitment, Lacol views architecture as an agent of social transformation and develops projects that act as catalysts for change in their immediate surroundings. Its commitment to inter-cooperation has led to joint initiatives with other cooperatives—such as La Dinamo Fundació and BATEC (Cooperative Hub for Energy Transition)—thereby expanding its impact. The firm’s work has garnered both national and international recognition, including the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award in the Emerging Architecture category (2022) and participation in the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, How Will We Live Together? (2021).

Carles Baiges Camprubí is an architect from ETSAB-UPC in Barcelona and has a master's degree in Urban Sociology from Universiteit van Amsterdam. He is doing a PhD at ICTA-UAB looking at housing cooperatives as examples to implement sufficiency and post-growth strategies. His work focuses in housing and eco-social transitions, through architecture, cooperativism and participation. He is one of the founding members of the cooperative of architects Lacol and member of La Borda cooperative housing. Lacol has been awarded with several recognitions, including the Emerging category of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Awards 2022, and has been selected in the biennials of architecture in Venice (2016, 2021), Buenos Aires (2017) and San Sebastián (2019). La Borda has also won the European Collective Housing Award and has been awarded at the European Responsible Housing Awards and the World Habitat Award.

*Post-talk cocktails included

Rozana Montiel is a Mexican architect and the founder of Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura, an interdisciplinary practice recognized for its socially engaged, community-centered, and sustainable approach to architecture. Her work ranges from small-scale objects to urban interventions, focusing on the transformation of public space through participatory design. Her projects have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice, São Paulo, and Rotterdam Biennials, and she has received major awards such as the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2019), the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture (2017), and the Emerging Voices Award from The Architectural League of New York (2016). In addition to her professional practice, she serves on the editorial board of Arquine magazine and has taught architecture at several universities.

*Post-talk cocktails included