Architectures of the Archive
Reorganizing Memory and Heritage

#4 of the Organizing Architectures Lecture Series on “Coloniality”

11.2.2026, 19 Uhr – 20:30 Uhr
DAM Auditorium
The lecture will be held in English.
Free admission, no advance registration required.

With Contributions by Setareh Noorani (Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam) and Prof. Dr. Sung Hong Kim (University of Seoul) and a Guided Tour through the Exhibition “Out of Storage” with Evelyn Steiner (Curator)

This event brings together Sung Hong Kim, Setareh Noorani, and Evelyn Steiner to discuss the politics and poetics of archives, including their exclusions, futures and gaps. Together, they explore how archives can become spaces for negotiation between memory and material, visibility and omission, and the local and the global.

Sung Hong Kim is Professor Emeritus of architecture and urbanism at the University of Seoul. He participated as a Co-Commissioner of the exhibition, “City of the Bang” for the Korean Pavilion in 2004. He organized the exhibition “Megacity Network: Contemporary Korean Architecture”, which traveled to Frankfurt, Berlin, Tallinn, Barcelona, and Seoul from 2007 to 2010. As director, he curated “The FAR Game: Constraints Sparking Creativity” for the Korean Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Prof. Kim has authored numerous books on Seoul’s architecture and urbanism, including “Seoul Solution” (Korean, 2020), The FAR Game (SPACE Books, 2016), “Street Corner Architecture” (Korean, 2011), “New Imagination of Urban Architecture” (Korean, 2009), and “Contemporary Korean Architecture: Megacity Network” (Jovis Verlag, 2007, Co-author & Editor). His forthcoming book, “Seoul Urban Architecture: Rising from the Crushing Bowl”, will be released in Spring 2026 by Park Books in Zurich. Since 2021, Prof. Kim has been serving as the director of curation for the inaugural exhibition “Korean Urban Architecture, 1950-2010: Building Life After the Korean War” at Korea’s first and largest National Museum of Urbanism and Architecture, scheduled to open in Spring 2027.

Setareh Noorani is an architect, researcher and curator at Nieuwe Instituut whose practice focuses on feminist, decolonial, non-institutional, and more-than-human perspectives in the way we build, remember and change cities. Her clients include Design Museum Den Bosch, Wereldmuseum Leiden, Metro54, Amsterdam Museum, Buro Stedelijk, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She currently leads the project “New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures”, and previously co-initiated “Hidden Histories” (with Creative Industries Fund NL), curated the exhibition “Designing the Netherlands”, and initiated “Feminist Design Strategies”. She also led the long-term research project “Collecting Otherwise” and the transnational programme “Arus Balik – Shifting Currents”. She has presented and facilitated at institutions including Barnard College of Architecture – Columbia University, the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft, ETH Zürich, Jameel Arts Centre, Geoffrey Bawa Trust, the British Museum, What Design Can Do, and Design Academy Eindhoven. Noorani co-edited the publications “Collecting Otherwise Manauals” (Nieuwe Instituut, 2025), “Remapping Collaborations Working Group” (Nieuwe Instituut, 2025), “Women in Architecture” (nai010, 2023), and has been published in VOLUME, Footprint Journal, and Radical Housing Journal, and others.

Evelyn Steiner is an architect (ETH) and art historian who works as a curator. Her most recent exhibition projects and discussion formats include “Design for All? Diversity as the Norm” at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich in 2024, “Bodily Encounters” at the Salon Suisse during the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021, and the Swiss extension of the exhibition “Frau Architekt. Seit mehr als 100 Jahren: Frauen im Architektenberuf“ (Zentrum Architektur Zürich, 2020). She also teaches, publishes and moderates in the fields of architecture and art.

This event is part of this year’s lecture series of the DFG Research Training Group “Organizing Architectures”. https://organizingarchitectures.org/