ALINA PAIAS
Bio
Alina Paias is a spatial designer, an architecture worker and an independent researcher investigating the production of architecture by engaging with feminist philosophy, new materialism, the environmental humanities, and the philosophy of technology.
She earned a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo and a Master's degree cum laude in Architecture from the Delft University of Technology. She has years of experience as an architecture worker; most recently she worked at CLOUD as part of the design team responsible for the new entrance hall at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She is also one of the curators for the 2024 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and a member of the Editorial Team for Footprint, the Delft Architecture Theory Journal. You can find her occasionally teaching at TU Delft, writing essays for books alone and with friends, and presenting her narrative experiments at conferences.
Selected publications
(Forthcoming) 2024: With Léa Alapini. Making a/one-self: Afro-Brazilians and more-than-double architectures of the Black Atlantic. In Noetics Without a Mind, edited by Robert A. Gorny, Stavros Kousoulas and Andrej Radman. Delft: TU Delft OPEN.
(Forthcoming) 2024: Ghosts of the Rio Doce: Tracing the Ethical Grounds for a Hauntological Practice of Architecture at the Site of Disaster. In The Space of Technicity: Theorising Social, Technical and Environmental Entanglements, edited by Robert A. Gorny, Stavros Kousoulas, Dulmini Perera and Andrej Radman. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
2019: The Home of the Witch︎︎︎. The Funambulist: Insurgent Architectures 23: 50-53.
Selected engagements
2024-current: Editorial Team member at Footprint: Delft Architecture Theory Journal.
2023-2024: Associate curator at the 2024 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Rotterdam, Netherlands.
2023: With Catherine Koekoek. “Sympoietic conditions for change: why are architects not willing to engage with the fact that their practice is situated?” Posthuman Symbioses Masterclass: A Thinking-With Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti︎︎︎. Delft, Netherlands.
2023: Guest lecturer in the Architectural Positions course, subtheme Temporalities. Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft.
2023: “The possibilities of raw materialism: accounting for difference in networked and multidimensional design.” Weaving Worlds: speculations between affect & evidence conference︎︎︎. Delft, Netherlands.
2022: “The forest as many things: encounters between native and non-native technologies and new ways of sensing the environment”. Noetics Without a Mind colloquium︎︎︎. Rotterdam, Netherlands.
2022: Guest lecturer in the Architectural Positions course, subtheme Temporalities. Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft.
Selected awards/honors
2022: TU Delft nomination for the EUmies Young Talent Architecture Award.
Minas, as in Mines: a Hauntological Approach to the Site of Disaster
2022: TU Delft nomination for the DAIDA Foundation Global Urban Thesis Award.
Minas, as in Mines: a Hauntological Approach to the Site of Disaster
2022: TU Delft nomination for the national Archiprix︎︎︎.
Minas, as in Mines: a Hauntological Approach to the Site of Disaster
CV︎︎︎
Twitter︎︎︎
are.na︎︎︎
For questions and collaborations contact info@alinapaias.com
This website was designed by my dearest friends Julia Vannucchi and Rodrigo Chedid.
Minas, as in Mines
Type: Master's thesis
Team: Alina Paias
Supervisor: Vanessa Grossman, Stavros Kousoulas, Hubert van der Meel
Institution: TU Delft
Location: Rio Doce, Brazil
Date: September 2021 - July 2022
This project responds to the event of disaster; more specifically, the contamination of the Rio Doce valley and the disruption of its cycles after the failure of an iron ore mine's tailings dam in 2015, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The damages initiated by the rupture took and still take many forms, extending over vast stretches of time and space. The engagements with the reverberations of this man-made catastrophe have been mediated by different understandings of justice, as the company responsible for managing the mine has been executing a complex and multi-layered reparations plan all over the valley as a part of a conduct adjustment agreement.
This proposal works under a different framing of justice, informed by its connection to the notion of responsibility as laid out by the philosopher Jacques Derrida in his writings on hauntology. From the initial hauntological approach this project manipulates and questions associated concepts such as response-ability, entanglement, ongoingness, contamination, co-constitution, purity and complexity, drawing from several theoretical sources, and proposes life-affirming site for the circulation of materials, people and knowledge, against the threat of premature death posed by the extractive economy. That happens through two main interventions interventions: spanning the entire river valley, the Line of Gift is a system for the movement of people that is executed through the appropriation of the existing extractive infrastructure, especially the Vitória-Minas railway. Simultaneously, a smaller node at the town of Rio Doce associates community-based productive activities to the fabrication of geopolymer concrete building elements using iron ore tailings as fillers. The continued production of this material is guaranteed through the supply of tailings from several soon-to-be-deactivated dams following a national resolution passed in 2019.
Link to complete thesis︎︎︎
The Home of the Witch
Type: Bachelor's graduation project
Team: Alina Paias
Supervisor: Nilce Aravecchia
Institution: Faculty of Architecture of the University of São Paulo
Location: Brazil
Date: March 2018 - December 2018
The Home of the Witch was my Final Graduation Project at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP). The Home of the Witch is an entirely cohesive project within itself, in which the chosen format (a book) allows for a narrative-based presentation of the design. The reader slowly unveils the project as if they were also a character slowly approaching a house. The progression of the book consists of a five-cycle repetition of a theoretical text, followed by an image that serves as its visual condensation, which is then followed by a section with one of five tales. The visual condensations are placed in paper bags inside the book. They can be removed from the bags and placed together, forming a single image. Each theoretical section is also synthesized by an affirmation about the Home of the Witch—a description of its philosophy presented at the end of each text.
Solar Cloud
Type: Art installation
Team: Paul Cournet, Alina Paias
Team leader: Paul Cournet
Office: CLOUD
Commissioner: BlowUp Art Den Haag
Location: Den Haag, Netherlands
Date: February 2023 - May 2023
Photographs by Ronald Smits
SOLAR CLOUD is an inflatable installation that floats above the Berlage kiosk’s terrace, located in Den Haag's historical city center. The piece is inspired by weather and solar balloons, objects designed to fulfil their functions in the most direct way possible. The printed message on its bottom layer, 'GOOD NEWS,' is a reference to Edwin Schlossberg's art project mentioned in the 1968 Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural publication about ecology, cybernetics, science and architecture. The piece retains the humor and wittiness of the original movement and can be read in either a more optimistic or more caustic tone.
Archives at Risk
Type: Exhibition project
Team: Tomas Dirrix, Alina Paias
Team leader: Tomas Dirrix
Office: Atelier Tomas Dirrix
Commissioner: Het Nieuwe Instituut
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands
Date: September 2022 - October 2022
Photographs by Jeph Francissen
Archives at Risk was a project presented by Het Nieuwe Instituut/Netwerk Archieven Design en Digitale Cultuur (NADD) during the 2022 Dutch Design Week. The intention behind the exhibition was to introduce the lack of a centralized, national design archive as an issue of public interest.
As a designer within Atelier Tomas Dirrix, I was tasked with developing the initial concept for the exhibition into a spatialized and feasible project while incorporating feedback from all collaborators involved and dealing with the material and construction constraints that a temporary project entails.
The installation consisted of a 16 meter long sculptural wall where photos of the archives of five designers (Borre, Emile Truijen, Hella Jongerius, Elma Beks through Jason Page+Karen Huang and Lies Ros), made especially for the project by Johannes Schwartz, were shown. In front of the wall, five sculptural objects designed by Manon van Hoeckel showed paper columns with phrases extracted from interviews with the designers being shredded into piles on the floor. Visitors could also sit down in a nook between panels and listen to the interviews and take handouts with points of action for better archival practices.
Project AAA
Type: Exhibiton project, curatorial project
Team: Sol Camacho, Alina Paias, Giovanna Tozzi
Team leader: Sol Camacho
Office: RADDAR
Commissioner: Gomide & Co, Fortes d'Aloia & Gabriel
Location: Chicago, USA, and São Paulo, Brazil
Date: September 2022 - October 2022
Photographs by Evan Jenkins and Edu Ortega
Project A.A.A. consisted of two exhibitions in Chicago and São Paulo. Art and Architecture Atlas of Brazil was designed in partnership with the gallery Gomide & Co for the 2019 edition of Expo Chicago. The team, comprised of Sol Camacho and I, was responsible for co-curating the exhibition and designing the booth. Antologia de Arte e Arquitetura was presented at Fortes d'Aloia & Gabriel in 2020 and was the result of a partnership between FdAG, Gomide & Co and RADDAR. Within a large team of members from both galleries and the office, I helped with selecting works and contacting artists and designing the exhibition space with Giovanna Tozzi.
Both projects explored exchanges between art and architecture in Brazil throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition design was based on opportunities to re-frame objects so they could be experienced from different angles and heights, allowing for conceptual and formal associations between artworks, furniture and decorative pieces, architecture models and drawings.
Minas, as in Mines
Type: Master's thesis
Team: Alina Paias
Supervisor: Vanessa Grossman, Stavros Kousoulas, Hubert van der Meel
Institution: TU Delft
Location: Rio Doce, Brazil
Date: September 2021 - July 2022
This project responds to the event of disaster; more specifically, the contamination of the Rio Doce valley and the disruption of its cycles after the failure of an iron ore mine's tailings dam in 2015, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The damages initiated by the rupture took and still take many forms, extending over vast stretches of time and space. The engagements with the reverberations of this man-made catastrophe have been mediated by different understandings of justice, as the company responsible for managing the mine has been executing a complex and multi-layered reparations plan all over the valley as a part of a conduct adjustment agreement.
This proposal works under a different framing of justice, informed by its connection to the notion of responsibility as laid out by the philosopher Jacques Derrida in his writings on hauntology (an ontology of the not-there). From the initial hauntological approach this project manipulates and questions associated concepts such as response-ability, entanglement, ongoingness, contamination, co-constitution, purity and complexity, drawing from several theoretical sources, and proposes life-affirming site for the circulation of materials, people and knowledge, against the threat of premature death posed by the extractive economy. That happens through two main interventions interventions: spanning the entire river valley, the Line of Gift is a system for the movement of people that is executed through the appropriation of the existing extractive infrastructure, especially the Vitória-Minas railway. Simultaneously, a smaller node at the town of Rio Doce associates community-based productive activities to the fabrication of geopolymer concrete building elements using iron ore tailings as fillers. The continued production of this material is guaranteed through the supply of tailings from several soon-to-be-deactivated dams following a national resolution passed in 2019.
Link to complete thesis︎︎︎
The Home of the Witch
Type: Bachelor's graduation project
Team: Alina Paias
Supervisor: Nilce Aravecchia
Institution: Faculty of Architecture of the University of São Paulo
Location: Brazil
Date: March 2018 - December 2018
The Home of the Witch was my Final Graduation Project at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP). The Home of the Witch is an entirely cohesive project within itself, in which the chosen format (a book) allows for a narrative-based presentation of the design. The reader slowly unveils the project as if they were also a character slowly approaching a house. The progression of the book consists of a five-cycle repetition of a theoretical text, followed by an image that serves as its visual condensation, which is then followed by a section with one of five tales. The visual condensations are placed in paper bags inside the book. They can be removed from the bags and placed together, forming a single image. Each theoretical section is also synthesized by an affirmation about the Home of the Witch—a description of its philosophy presented at the end of each text.
Solar Cloud
Type: Art installation
Team: Paul Cournet, Alina Paias
Team leader: Paul Cournet
Office: CLOUD
Commissioner: BlowUp Art Den Haag
Location: Den Haag, Netherlands
Date: February 2023 - May 2023
Photographs by Ronald Smits
SOLAR CLOUD is an inflatable installation that floats above the Berlage kiosk’s terrace, located in Den Haag's historical city center. The piece is inspired by weather and solar balloons, objects designed to fulfil their functions in the most direct way possible. The printed message on its bottom layer, 'GOOD NEWS,' is a reference to Edwin Schlossberg's art project mentioned in the 1968 Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural publication about ecology, cybernetics, science and architecture. The piece retains the humor and wittiness of the original movement and can be read in either a more optimistic or more caustic tone.
Archives at Risk
Type: Exhibition project
Team: Tomas Dirrix, Alina Paias
Team leader: Tomas Dirrix
Office: Atelier Tomas Dirrix
Commissioner: Het Nieuwe Instituut
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands
Date: September 2022 - October 2022
Photographs by Jeph Francissen
Archives at Risk was a project presented by Het Nieuwe Instituut/Netwerk Archieven Design en Digitale Cultuur (NADD) during the 2022 Dutch Design Week. The intention behind the exhibition was to introduce the lack of a centralized, national design archive as an issue of public interest.
As a designer within Atelier Tomas Dirrix, I was tasked with developing the initial concept for the exhibition into a spatialized and feasible project while incorporating feedback from all collaborators involved and dealing with the material and construction constraints that a temporary project entails.
The installation consisted of a 16 meter long sculptural wall where photos of the archives of five designers (Borre, Emile Truijen, Hella Jongerius, Elma Beks through Jason Page+Karen Huang and Lies Ros), made especially for the project by Johannes Schwartz, were shown. In front of the wall, five sculptural objects designed by Manon van Hoeckel showed paper columns with phrases extracted from interviews with the designers being shredded into piles on the floor. Visitors could also sit down in a nook between panels and listen to the interviews and take handouts with points of action for better archival practices.
Project AAA
Type: Exhibiton project, curatorial project
Team: Sol Camacho, Alina Paias, Giovanna Tozzi
Team leader: Sol Camacho
Office: RADDAR
Commissioner: Gomide & Co, Fortes d'Aloia & Gabriel
Location: Chicago, USA, and São Paulo, Brazil
Date: September 2022 - October 2022
Photographs by Evan Jenkins and Edu Ortega
Project A.A.A. consisted of two exhibitions in Chicago and São Paulo. Art and Architecture Atlas of Brazil was designed in partnership with the gallery Gomide & Co for the 2019 edition of Expo Chicago. The team, comprised of Sol Camacho and I, was responsible for co-curating the exhibition and designing the booth. Antologia de Arte e Arquitetura was presented at Fortes d'Aloia & Gabriel in 2020 and was the result of a partnership between FdAG, Gomide & Co and RADDAR. Within a large team of members from both galleries and the office, I helped with selecting works and contacting artists and designing the exhibition space with Giovanna Tozzi.
Both projects explored exchanges between art and architecture in Brazil throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition design was based on opportunities to re-frame objects so they could be experienced from different angles and heights, allowing for conceptual and formal associations between artworks, furniture and decorative pieces, architecture models and drawings.