Critical Broadcasting Lab

MIT CAST Mellon Faculty Fellow Ana Miljački is a critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT. Observing contemporary modes of architectural production and transmission, she saw a need to intervene in the field through new forms of operative criticism. Her project, Critical Broadcasting Lab, is driven by political and disciplinary urgencies and engages students interested in intervening in contemporary architectural discourse.

Through a series of interventions including workshops and public lectures, Critical Broadcasting Lab performs as a curatorial entity at MIT and beyond. In a series of Agit Arch Experiments in 2018, Miljački and participants of Critical Broadcasting Lab investigated contemporary media and methods of broadcasting architectural discourse and criticism.

In the fall 2019 series “Conversations on Care,” the Critical Broadcasting Lab collaborates with the stewards of the architectural public sphere, who have led existing or have established new channels for the critical discussion of architecture. These platforms traverse different media of architectural broadcasting, from galleries and journals to listservs and podcasts, but they are united by their caretakers’ labor focused on establishing and maintaining precision, intelligence, and the humanity of individual utterances, as well as of the broader discussions that these platforms enable. Through conversation, which as a format necessarily operates through co-production, Critical Broadcasting Lab examines the contemporary motivations, politics, and interests, as well as the privilege of the caring subjects involved in curatorial and editorial forms of work.

The lab is simultaneously conducting an oral history, presented in the form of an exhibition, about two forms of refusal by architects to engage: refusal to accept commissions and refusal to sue for copyright infringement.

More at the project website: Critical Broadcasting Lab

Past Events

Conversations on Care: Marina Otero Verzier
May 29, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: José Esparza Chong Cuy
May 22, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: Mimi Zeiger
May 15, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: Jia Gu
May 8, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: Amanda Reeser Lawrence
May 1, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: James Graham and Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt
April 24, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: Heroic Team
April 17, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Conversations on Care: Cynthia Davidson and Bryony Roberts
April 10, 2020 / 5:00pm
WAWD?Radio

Play Room Exhibition
February 14 – March 9, 2020
The Keller Gallery,  MIT Building 7, Room 408

Conversations on Care: Sylvia Lavin
March 3, 2020  / 6:00pm
SA+P Long Lounge, MIT Building 7, Room 429

“Play Date: Barter Town” with Jeanette Kim, All of the Above, and CCA
March 6, 2020 / 6:00pm
The Keller Gallery,  MIT Building 7, Room 408

Retro-Utopian Alternatives for Belgrade, Serbia
Presented by Critical Broadcasting Lab: Sydney Cinalli, Stratton Coffman, Boliang Du, Gabrielle Heffernan, Ben Hoyle, Eytan Levi, Catherine Lie, Marisa Waddle, Sarah Wagner, Yutan Sun, Ana Miljački, Rodrigo Cesarman, and Trevor Herman Hilker
2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
September 7 – November 10, 2019
Donuimun Museum Village, Seoul, South Korea

Shared Trainers: A Dinner Party
Presented by Critical Broadcasting Lab: Ana Miljački, Gideon Schwartzman, Trevor Herman Hilker, Sydney Cinalli, Stratton Coffman, and Sarah Wagner
São Paulo International Architecture Biennial
September 10 – December 9, 2019
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Conversations on Care: Beatrice Gallilee
October 24, 2019 / 6:00pm
SA+P Long Lounge, MIT Building 7, Room 429

Conversations on Care: Tom Weaver
September 16, 2019 / 6:00pm
SA+P Long Lounge, MIT Building 7, Room 429

Agit Arch Experiments Roundtable
Mark Wasiuta, Felicity Scott and Ana Miljački
December 3, 2018 / 12:30pm
SA+P Long Lounge, MIT Building 7, Room 429

Agit Arch Experiment 3: “Populism” with Ana Miljački
November 16, 17 & 18, 2018

Public Presentation: How to Read
Luke Bulman
November 2, 2018 / 6:00pm
SA+P Long Lounge, MIT Building 7, Room 429

Agit Arch Experiment 2: “(Hacking) Click Bait Politics” with Luke Bulman and Ana Miljački
November 3 & 4, 2018

Public Presentation: “Dimensions of Citizenship” 
Ann Lui and Mimi Zeiger
October 12, 2018 / 6:00pm
SA+P Long Lounge, MIT Building 7, Room 429

Free and open to the public, no registration necessary

Agit Arch Experiment 1: Ann Lui, Mimi Zeiger and Ana Miljački
October 13 & 14, 2018

Ana Miljački is a critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, where she teaches history, theory, and design. Her research interests range from the role of architecture and architects in the Cold War era Eastern Europe, through the theories of postmodernism in late socialism, to politics of contemporary architectural production. Miljački was part of the three member curatorial team, with Eva Frank i Gilabert and Ashley Schafer, of the US Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, where their Biennale project, titled OfficeUS, critically examined the last century of US architectural offices; their professionalization and their concomitant global contribution.

Biography: MIT Architecture Department