saai Lecture 2026: Claudia Shmidt
Uncovering Uncertainty. Experiences and Insights from the World of Architecture Archives
Claudia Shmidt (Prof. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella)
“Wonder is the beginning of knowledge”: this is how Ernst Gombrich expressed in Art and Illusion the impact of images, things, and the gaze on the creation of human culture. Archives form a rare, random, and unfamiliar universe that awakens curiosity and bewilderment. In particular, architectural archives—composed of fragments of things, objects, blueprints, documents, photographs, strange elements, times—often contradict the works themselves. Why are they necessary? Why are they inevitable? What they reveal, in general, is life, contingency, and the winding paths that grant meaning, in unexpected ways, to architecture itself.
To address these aspects, this presentation explores diverse experiences within archives across various situations, ranging from the discovery of their existence and the challenges of inventorying them to blind consultations in search of clues akin to detective work. As the nexus between history and the present, they help configure a contemporary critical perspective, as provisional as it is indispensable, for designing toward the future.
Claudia Shmidt is an Associate Research Professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Studies at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina), where she also heads the History and Theory Area for the Architecture Program. She is an architect and holds a Ph.D. in History (with a specialization in Art Theory) from the University of Buenos Aires. Her recent work includes serving as a Visiting Scholar at Sapienza Università di Roma (2025), Chercheuse Invitée at the French Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (2023) and Invited Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture for the exhibition series Out of the Box: Amancio Williams (2022–2024), as well as co-author of its accompanying publication, which was awarded in 2026 by the Society of Architectural Historians.
Teilnahme
Die Teilnahme ist kostenlos. Eine Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich.
Termin und Ort
Mittwoch, 25. November 2026, 19:00
KIT-Fakultät für Architektur
20.40 Fritz Haller Hörsaal
Englerstraße 7
76131 Karlsruhe
Jährliche saai Lecture
Mit der Einführung der saai Lectures, einem jährlichen Vortrag mit internationalen Gästen, wird das saai | Archiv für Architektur und Ingenieurbau als dynamischer Wissensort in den Diskurs gebauter Umwelten aktiv eingebunden. Archive sind das Fundament einer nachhaltigen Zukunft, Grundlage für die Aufarbeitung gesellschaftlichen Erbes und Generator für immer bessere Fragen.