Fall 2025 Lecture Series: "Critical Practice"
In the face of today’s social and environmental urgencies, the series invites reflection on the evolving role of designers as critical agents in shaping equitable, resilient, and culturally grounded futures. Contributing practitioners and educators working across architecture, landscape, and urbanism activate design as a tool for critique, transformation, and care. Together, these voices sketch a field in motion—one that is actively reshaping what it means to practice today.
Vatican Chapel
About the Speaker
Abstract
It would be nice to make architecture like trees, in the broadest sense. So the trees are the architecture, and the forest is the city. So, let’s not forget to see the forest for the city. Just as the saying goes “You can’t see the forest for the trees”.
Bio
Javier Corvalán Espínola, born in Asunción, Paraguay, received his architectural degree from the Catholic University of Asunción and completed his postgraduate studies at the Sapienza University of Rome.
He is Professor at the Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Arte at the National University of Asunción, and Professor at the Facultad de Ciencias y Tecnologías at the Catholic University of Asunción. He also teaches at several universities in Latin America and holds a Visiting Professor title at the Istituto di Urbanistica e Architettura di Venezia (IUAV).
He gives conferences at universities around the world. His projects and works have been published in specialized architectural books, journals and magazines. He has won several public, national, and international competitions, and many of his designs have been built. In 2006, he received the Official Cross, awarded by Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, for his design and work at the Centro Cultural de España Juan de Salazar.
In 2018, he received the Medaglia d’Argento del Pontificato for the design and construction of one of the chapels representing the Vatican at the Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy.
In 2020, he received his PhD in Architecture, City, and Design from the Istituto di Urbanistica e Architettura di Venezia (IUAV).
Vatican Chapel