Sarah Riviere architect is an activist for change in the future of residential living.

ARCHITECTURE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE  

Dr. Sarah Riviere is an architect working passionately for change in the design of social space. She holds a Ph.D. in Architectural Design from the Bartlett, University College London and has extensive international experience as an architect as well as in teaching, research and publishing.

2024 #EARTHDAY: Dream Play Challenge Workshop - Working towards a comprehensive practice of sustainable architecture

Building on the success of the “Dream – Play – Challenge: The Future of Residential Living” symposium and the associated 2023 publication, this workshop applies the Dream – Play – Challenge methodology to another urgent topic in architecture: Sustainability. The workshop is co-organised by Sarah Riviere, Wiltrud Simbürger and Shivani Chakraborti, assisted by Selen Sönmez.

Why sustainability in architecture? Sustainability is one of the key requirements of architectural practice today, but are our current structures and practices adequate to the task ahead? Architects today frame sustainability mainly through the ecological lens with strategies based on a techno-environmental approach, while socio-political, economic, policy and aesthetic questions remain largely neglected. In this workshop we will explore the range of current thinking on attaining a truly sustainable future for our built environment, and challenge the architectural profession to get on board.

Why the Dream – Play – Challenge method? We are convinced that the ways and tools we use to work on issues impact the outcomes we obtain. So we set up Dream – Play – Challenge as a feminist method of exchange designed to enable the idealism of dreams through the creativity of play. Our events are designed as spaces where we can challenge ourselves and our colleagues to raise our voices for change.

Workshop protagonists

The Economics of Sustainability:

Dani Hill-Hansen, architect and sustainable design engineer, EFFEKT architects, Copenhagen. Dani specialises in facilitating cross-sector research projects to bridge the gap between climate science and building industry action. She is co-editor of the Doughnut for Urban Development: A Manual

The Policy of Sustainability: Katrine Østergaard Bang, architect and consultant at the Danish Association of Architects. Katrine focusses on public planning and management at a municipal level. She is chief editor and co-author of A Guide to Danish Architecture Towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Poetics of Sustainability: Susanne Schmidt, anthropologist, artist, and facilitator. Susanne creates contact zones between species, disciplines, and institutions. She develops independent art-science projects and is co-head of the STEAM projects at the Museum für Naturkunde in Bavaria with the BIOTOPIA Lab in Munich.

Sustainability through History: Henriette Steiner, Associate Professor and Head of Section for Landscape Architecture, Planning and Society at the University of Copenhagen. Henriette works on diversity and justice in architecture and urban history primarily through feminist writing collectives. She is co-publisher of Untold Stories: Women, Gender and Architecture in Denmark.

See our event page here.

2023 PUBLICATION: Dream - Play - Challenge. The Future of Residential Living

The international symposium, Dream – Play – Challenge, the Future of Residential Living, brought together a global cross-section of researchers and practitioners to face up to contemporary concerns on residential living. In its ground-breaking work for change, the Dream – Play – Challenge Project has been described by Professor Jane Rendell, Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett, UCL, as re-imagining “the kinds of work – political activism, policy, advocacy, and access – which animated feminist architecture in the 1970s” (Rendell, 2022).

Our new publication is an anthology of the conversations and presentations from the DPC symposium: "The Dream – Play – Challenge Project. Facing up to the Crisis in Residential Living," Wiltrud Simbürger and Sarah Riviere [Eds.], 2023. More details here: "The Dream – Play – Challenge Project. Facing up to the Crisis in Residential Living"and DOWNLOAD here

 

Latest News:

#Earthday 2024. Dream Play Challenge Workshop: Working towards a more Comprehensive Practice of Sustainability in Architecture at the Felleshus in Berlin.

 

Published January, 2023, "The Dream - Play - Challenge Project: Facing up the the Crisis in Residential Living". More information on Facebook or Insta.

Sarah Riviere Architect. Ecological Urban Repair in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Improving urban space and local ecologies

Sarah Riviere architect's completed new-build project in Berlin-Kreuzberg brings one of the largest inhabitable green walls - 200 square metres in size - to Berlin. The new residential building with twelve apartments and a ground floor café, also includes eight flats with box-balconies where residents can stand within their own vertical garden above the street. In this project the challenge lay in integrating the latest green "living wall" technology into an urban façade with 8 balconies and 20 windows. Here ecological design and construction, urban planning for the neighbourhood, sustainable structural engineering and fire protection were successfully brought together in one design. The building was selected for the BDA Prize 2021, and for exhibition at DA! Architecture in und aus Berlin organised by the Berlin Chamber of Architects. More information here...

Reichenberger Str. 86a, 10999 Berlin-Xberg. Photograph © Jan Bitter, June 2017

The Survival Lounge and Berliner Architekt*innen: Oral History at the TU Berlin 

Sarah Riviere architect's recent seminars at the TU Berlin include the Survival Lounge according to Sara Ahmed, and the Berliner Architekt*innen: Oral History Project. Both were generously supported by the Berlin Chamber of Architects and were exhibited in the [FRAU] ARCHITEKT*IN exhibition, June - July 2021. The three recent publications from these seminars can be accessed online here:
- Building the Survival Lounge
- Inhabiting the Survival Lounge
- Berliner Architekt*innen: Oral History 

The Survival Lounge Project by Sarah Riviere and Hermann Schlimme at the TU Berlin focussed on intersectional feminist design and construction.