Event
What If: Reimagining Education and the Campus of the Future – Erasmus + Blended Intensive Program (BIP)
Location
Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Date
6.-10.10.2025
Jana Čulek was invited as a one of the guest lecturers at the the Erasmus + BIP titled “What If: Reimagining Education and the Campus of the Future” held at ISCTE in Lisbon. The lecture titled “What if utopia?”, which was presented under the thematic topic “Scenarios” to students from Turkey, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, and Romania, offered an insight into the ongoing Edutopia project as well as different ways in which we can use utopia as a critical method to create speculative scenarios for our built environments and their inhabitants. Jana also actively participated as a guest critic throughout the week-long workshop, offering reflection on the students’ assignments which explored the future scenarios of architectural education.
Lecture Abstract
What if consider that the time of totalizing utopias has passed, but we still refuse to abandon utopia as a method for imagining alternative socio-spatial futures? What is speculative thinking could operate not only through comprehensive visions of ideal worlds, but also through fragments, narratives, pedagogical experiments, and material artefacts that provide hints and trigger conversations about possible futures? Starting from these questions, the text reflects on two sites in which utopian thinking continues to operate within contemporary spatial practice – the first an educational and pedagogical one, enabling students to use utopia as a tool for imagining futures embedded within our present socio-spatial conditions; and the other, a materialized spatial practice which through the production of speculative and discursive fragments implies alternative worlds without ever fully depicting them. Together, these examples propose that utopia could still exist in contemporary spatial practice, but this time as a critical method for expanding the horizon of our collective spatial imagination.
About the Event:
“Organized as part of the Erasmus Direito@Cidade Consortium, this Blended Intensive Program (BIP) invites participants to critically and creatively rethink the role of universities in shaping the future of society. How can we learn? And how could we teach? By 2050, Education will face unprecedented challenges and transformative opportunities, shaped by rapid social, political, environmental, and technological changes. In this context, University Campuses must evolve into responsive, inclusive ecosystems capable of adapting to and addressing the complexities of a rapidly-changing world.
This program provides a platform to reimagine and redesign educational dynamics by encouraging participants to question existing paradigms. Using the University of Lisbon Campus as both a case study and an experimental ground, the program fosters a critical perspective alongside creative, forward-thinking solutions. This BIP aims to equip participants with tools to envision how radical and utopian ideas can transform the physical and social structures of a university campus, reconfiguring it as a centre of innovation ready to meet the demands of an increasingly complex world.
KEY QUESTIONS:
– How can radical and utopian imagination reshape spatial, social, and educational models?
– How can cross-disciplinary collaboration be integrated into the design of educational dynamics, fostering innovative learning and problem-solving across fields?
– How can counterculture approaches challenge conventional notions of space, learning, teaching, and community within a University Campus ecosystem?
These questions will be explored through a radical and utopian approach, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration across fields such as Literature, Arts & Media, Architecture & Landscape, Photography, and Visual Arts, with a focus on topics like Education, Transdisciplinarity, and Creativity.
By gathering insights from diverse fields, the program aims to inspire speculative, provocative, and critical visions for new educational models, structures, and dynamics. With a range of activities – including field visit, lectures, workshops, work labs, collective work and interventions – this BIP represents a call to action to redesign the future of education, preparing Universities to lead in a world defined by unpredictability and rapid change.”
Organizers: Alexandra Paio, Inês Nascimento, Henrique Andrade
