Recognizing Facts on the Ground: Deconstructing Power in the Built Environment

You are cordially invited to attend the research seminar by Lukas Pauer:

Date: 1 Oct 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Venue: SDE3 Level 4, LT423

Recognizing Facts on the Ground: Deconstructing Power in the Built Environment

Abstract
Drawing on his integrated practice, research, and teaching, Lukas Pauer introduces a practice-based academic toolkit he refers to as built environment literacy, combining analytical techniques from architecture, geography, politology, and media to read or make legible, through processes of decoding and deconstruction, the ways in which power has been written into the built environment. In the face of present challenges, Pauer’s academic practice employs a rigorous design research approach that traces historical continuities in order to develop a vocabulary for visually, materially, and spatially describing how authority over people and land is embedded in the seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday. In recent years, Pauer has worked on a series of projects aimed at exposing how built objects have been instrumentalized by political actors around the world to project power. His most recent research-based exhibition How to Steal a Country, for instance, detailed how Russia has instrumentalized architecture to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty from 2014 to its ongoing full-scale invasion. Transforming the gallery into scenes from the Russian invasion using scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes, and tableaus, the exhibition revealed the key role of architecture and infrastructure in contemporary sovereignty disputes. More broadly, Pauer’s academic practice seeks to empower marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities. By situating this toolkit across practice, research, and teaching, this research seminar argues that design research is uniquely positioned to confront urgent global challenges of space and power, particularly in relation to social justice across the built and natural environments, such as decolonization and decarbonization.

Lukas Pauer is a licensed architect, urbanist, historian, educator, and the Founding Director of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab, an investigative practice and think-tank at the intersections of architecture, geography, politology, and media, dedicated to exposing intangible systems and hidden agendas within the built environment. Most recently at the University of Toronto (UofT), Lukas has been an Assistant Professor of Architecture, Inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow. There, his contribution at disciplinary intersections has been reflected in his engagements as a Faculty Affiliate in Urban Studies at the UofT A&S SofC as well as a Faculty Affiliate in Global Affairs and Public Policy at the UofT Munk CERES. From the Architectural Association in London, he holds a PhD AD on political imaginaries in architectural and urban design history with a focus on how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history. Pauer holds an MAUD from Harvard University and an MSc Arch from ETH Zürich. Among widespread international recognition, he has been selected as an Ambassadorial Scholar by the Rotary Foundation, a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, and an Emerging Leader by the European Forum Alpbach — leadership programs committed to change-making impact within local communities.