Joana Rafael is an architect, researcher and lecturer. Her work focuses on (issues of) ecology, human geography and natural sciences, encompassing contemporary culture, media studies, art and technology. She combines architecture as a discipline of thought and design practice, reflecting on the boundaries of buildings, infrastructures and (radiological-)contaminated territories. Engages in speculative thinking and writing to develop a critical distance from anthropocentric understandings and attend to reciprocal relationships between humans and nature. Joana teaches Contextual Studies and Contemporary Culture-related courses. She is a member of CEGOT (Center for Studies in Geography and Spatial Planning) and CEAA (Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo). Joana is a cofounder of REFINERY BOARD.
Coll()sion
MA thesis DISSERTATION, Research Architecture, Goldsmith, London
Coll[]sion focuses on the relation between two, seven days interval, event-accidents that happened one in the deep Sea and other in the Outer Space. Both presented as remarkable misfortunes and constructed as paradigmatic chances opened the door to the recognition of failure and to attempts to overcome (or improve) if not to silence and/or deceive. Positioning schemas of military behaviour, the privilege of relation to space and standards for prevailing techno-scientific developments to be socio-constructed, transformed or (re)invented, this work inquires how are international and relatively free spaces produced and by what means they interconnect forms of governance and/or dispute.
