Nishat Awan will discuss the relationship between architecture and displacement, an issue that has been at the centre of her research and practice for over a decade. Thinking about the journeys of undocumented migration, she will discuss how the refuge is made and found in the most unexpected of places and how architecture can consider refuge beyond the simplistic notion of shelter as an emergency response towards considering spaces of respite that emerge with or without architects.

Nishat Awan is a lecturer at Urban Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Situated between art and architectural practice, Awan’s research and writing explore the relationship between geopolitics and space through a focus on migration and displacement. She is interested in forms of spatial representation, particularly in relation to the digital and the limits of witnessing as a form of ethical engagement with distant places. Currently, she leads the project Topological Atlas, which aims to produce visual counter-geographies of the fragile movements of migrants as they encounter the security apparatus of the border.