Studio Orta

keynote at San Francisco Art Institute for the Ann Chamberlain Distinguished Fellow in Interdisciplinary Studies series.

This presentation maps what Professor Lucy Orta calls "architectures with soul". They are objects that respond to a critical and constructive gaze on the most sensitive areas of society, evoking the need for change, poetically prefiguring reality and suggesting alternative life styles. She has produced numerous interventions and actions putting on stage crucial themes of the contemporary world: the community and social exclusion, dwelling, mobility, sustainable development, recycling. Parallel and feeding into her practice Orta was invested as the first Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Fashion at London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London (2002-2007) and she now holds the title of Professor of Art, Fashion and the Environment. Lucy was also a founding member of the Master in Industrial Design 'Man and Humanity' at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (2002), the first design program to stimulate socially driven and sustainable design.