14th Annual Arquine Conference: Space

“Architects could never explain space. When we think about space, we have only looked at its containers. As if space itself is invisible.”
— Rem Koolhaas

“The problem isn’t so much to find out how we have reached this point, but simply to recognize that we have reached it, that we are here. There isn’t one space, a beautiful space round about, a beautiful space all around us, there’s a whole lot of small bits of space ...”
— Georges Perec

The 14th Arquine International Architecture and Design Conference, sponsored by the art, architecture and design magazine Arquine, will be held March 11–12, 2013, at the Teatro Metropólitan in Mexico City. The theme of this year’s conference is Space.

Confirmed speakers include David Chipperfield, Denise Scott Brown, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Atelier Bow Wow, Peter Greenaway, Delugan Meissl, Saskia Sassen, Michel Rojkind, Manuel Delgado, Kersten Geers, Alfredo Brillembourg, Marcelo Ebrard and Ronan Bouroullec.

For more information, and to register for the conference, visit the Arquine website:

History has granted architecture the role of dividing up space. It manifests itself in providing lodging and orienting humankind, who inhabits this fragmented whole we call space and which is interwoven with time at a tacit and essential level.

We live in space, in these spaces, in these cities, in these fields, in these corridors, in these gardens. It is plain to see. And yet, it is not possible to quantify space or give shape to it: it is extension and connection, fact and certainty through time and movement. Space may be travelled through and narrated, experienced and actuated. Space contains and is contained, situates and signifies.

Arquine raises the question “what do we talk when we talk about space?” in order to explore the different meanings it conveys. The conference presents multi-disciplinary perspectives to redeem the value of each of these and thereby reveal the “Species of Spaces.”

Places is a media sponsor of the conference.