The last of the archives
Conférence d’Alejandra Celedón et de Serena Dambrosio, introduite par Marcos Garcia-Rojo, enseignant-chercheur
Organisée dans le cadre du cycle de conférences mensuelles proposé par Alice Grégoire, enseignante-chercheuse accompagnée de Colombe Rigaud, Cosme Giusti et Andriana Sinchevici, étudiantes et étudiant à l’ÉNSA Versailles
What does it mean to build an archive? And what does it mean to build a pavilion? At first glance, these two acts seem to belong to different orders: one preserves, the other proposes. Yet both are fundamentally spatial operations, ways of selecting what matters, organising knowledge, and deciding how it should be accessed, by whom, and under what conditions. This talk brings together Alejandra Celedón (Dean, FaAAD UDP) and Serena Dambrosio (Associate Professor, FaAAD UDP), co-directors of the International Studio "The Last of the Archives", a three-year series of interdisciplinary studios bringing together architecture, art, and design, in which the archive serves as the central pedagogical problem. Both have also addressed these questions as curators: Celedón as curator of Stadium, the Chilean Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, which transformed the pavilion itself into a spatial and political document; and Dambrosio as curator of Reflective Intelligences, the Chilean Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, which examined processes and spaces of collective deliberation in the context of digital infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Drawing on their shared experience as educators and curators, Dambrosio and Celedón will reflect on the pavilion as a form of temporary archive that selects, frames, and stages knowledge for a specific moment and audience and on the archive as a projective device, capable of imagining other ways of organising memory, access, and public life.
Alejandra Celedón (Canada, 1979) is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Art and Design at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago. An architect from the Universidad de Chile, she holds an MA from The Bartlett (UCL) and a PhD from the Architectural Association. Her research explores archives and architectural knowledge, examining their spatial, institutional, and epistemological dimensions.
Serena Dambrosio (Italy, 1989) is Associate Professor and Editor-in-Chief of Revista 180 at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago. An architect, researcher and editor, she holds her architecture degree from Politecnico di Milano and a PhD in Architecture and Urban Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her work explores architecture, abstraction, and technology, and she was co-curator of Chile's Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
