Joana Rafael is an architect practitioner and Postdoctoral Researcher, specializing in ecological concerns related to pollution and contamination, both indoors and in urban planning. Her research explores the intersections of architecture and urbanism with human geography, environmental studies, and power dynamics, encompassing contemporary culture, media studies, art, and technology. She investigates the materiality and limits of physical infrastructures in relation to Earth's systems and the reciprocal relationships between humans and nature, with a particular focus on radiologically contaminated environments. Joana has taught Contextual Studies and Contemporary Culture-related courses at institutions including ESAP in Porto, ISCE Douro in Penafiel, Central Saint Martins in London, and the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury. She is a member of CEGOT (Center for Studies in Geography and Spatial Planning) and CEAA (Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo), and a co-founder of REFINERY BOARD. Joana holds a Master of Architecture and Urban Cultures from Metropolis, Barcelona, as well as a Master of Research Architecture and a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London. She also earned a Healthier Materials and Sustainable Building Specialization certificate from Parsons School of Design, The New School. In addition to her academic pursuits, Joana is a certified farmer.
MAS and the Reserves of Future Catastrophe
MASTERCLASS at The Barber Shop Summer School, Lisbon, Portugal
Examines reserve realities of the nuclear and their proliferation in an ever more extensive network, that envelops other activities and extends towards a permanent, unified and world-scale techno-sphere. These nuclear reserves will be explored in relation to an eschatological economy of salvation that governs attempts to predict, contain and even eradicate the risk of a catastrophic crisis, and the great socio-political, technocratic and cultural frameworks built around this. A specific focus will fall on how their architecture is developed in relation to the governance of risk, being defined by constraints that aim to manage the future and fix natural and historical time, drawing a horizon line that encloses and protects spatial and temporal integrity in order to prevent any contamination that threatens it. The talk will examine how these architectural measures attempt to construct a temenos, an autonomous world, set apart and held in forced stasis deemed to fail.