AREA Lunch Talk Episode 3: Artefact
We're documenting and synthesising these moments to leave a trace and open further discussion and exchanges.
This is Episode 3, held on 22 April 2026, hosted by the Department of Architecture, titled "Artefact", and moderated by Prof. Juuso Tervo.
Text by Elina Koivisto. Photos by Alejandra Vera.
Architecture Lunch Talk #3 discusses artefacts, resistance and communication
Forty-six attendees gathered for the third AREA Lunch Talk on Artistic Research. Professor Maarit M盲kel盲 opened the event by tracing back the need for the discussions to the SAAB report favorable to artistic research efforts at Aalto ARTS and the aims to promote, develop, and collect work emerging across practices.
The headline of the event was 鈥淎rtefact鈥. Panu Savolainen, Professor of History of Architecture and Architectural Conservation, opened the 鈥渢rigger鈥 discussion by framing artefacts as temporal events rather than fixed objects, citing 鈥淥bjects as events鈥 and examples ranging from Cleopatra鈥檚 Needle to buildings whose components change over time. Savolainen also highlighted nonhuman agency鈥攕uch as birds selecting a single wire color for nests despite alternatives鈥攁nd proposed treating artefacts as active agents in research, not just subjects of study.
Two project-driven perspectives followed. Architect and Doctoral Researcher Maiju Suomi outlined how the practice-led case study project Alusta Pavilion functions as both an artistic component and a methodology for addressing environmental and ethical questions. Suomi鈥檚 approach positions humans as part of nature and acknowledges knowledge co-production with nonhuman actors, including pollinating insects, plants, soil, and microbes. The pavilion, Suomi noted, operates less to persuade than to invite participation and reflection. Pia Fricker, Professor of Computational Design, examined immersive, data-driven computational artefacts as research, expanding the discussion into virtual and digital domains and raising questions about how 鈥渞esistance鈥 manifests in computational practice.
The panel and audience discussion begun by moderator Juuso Tervo taking up a line from Deleuze鈥攁rt resists rather than communicates鈥攖o ask how research artefacts might 鈥渞esist,鈥 including in our relation to other species. Participants largely set aside debates over whether particular artefacts are 鈥渁rt,鈥 focusing instead on what artefacts do within research processes. Several speakers emphasized the structural challenges of architecture鈥攊ts cost, slow timelines, and dependence on large systems鈥攁nd argued that small, concrete acts can reconfigure value frameworks. Demonstrations that 鈥渨ork,鈥 even at limited scales, can influence definitions of better and worse and shape education, funding, and practice.
Additional contributions pointed to architectures that are not reliant on durable material artefacts, referencing Indigenous practices among S谩mi and Aboriginal communities, and to research on human鈥搈icrobe relations in Iceland that reveals 鈥渦ntapped knowledge spaces.鈥 The environmental impact of contemporary architecture was underscored as a critical concern.
On artistic research specifically, attendees noted its methodological freedom and potential to bridge critical perspectives. The conversation leaned toward processes and actualizations over static outputs: artefacts as instruments for asking questions and building inclusive frameworks that can involve nonhuman stakeholders. Communication itself surfaced as a constraint, with participants questioning the reliance on text and language and noting that early universities functioned without buildings. The difficulty of communicating research questions beyond human audiences was raised as a challenge that may elude conventional reasoning. Several participants argued that artistic research should not be held to identical standards of accuracy as natural sciences, proposing instead a different kind of rigor鈥攚hat some called 鈥減oetic precision.鈥
The event ended with the announcement of a new web hub for gathering and aggregating outputs and processes from across these approaches. Organizers framed it as a next step for connecting projects and researchers, enabling small-scale demonstrations to inform broader shifts in values and practices within the field.