Over the past decade, @manijeh.verghese has been interested in creating curatorial platforms to widen access to who can participate in conversations about architecture, our cities and spaces. She has explored this idea through her role as the Head of Public Engagement at the Architectural Association (AA) where she curates the public programme of lectures and exhibitions including the New Models lecture series that invited practitioners from different disciplines to discuss how their work can change the models around which society is organised. This interest is also applied to her teaching with Inigo Minns in AA Diploma Unit 12 and her independent curatorial projects including co-curating the 2021 British Pavilion – The Garden of Privatised Delights at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale with Madeleine Kessler, and more recently working on the visitor experience and co-curation process for a new South Asia Gallery at the Manchester Museum in partnership with the British Museum that is being designed by Studio C102 and Mobile Studio Architects. At a time when we have lost our faith in long-established institutions, we urgently need new models and systems to shift power structures, socio-economic forces and structural inequalities present in society today to give us new tools to rethink the world around us.
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/publicprogramme/whatson
https://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/the-garden-of-privatised-delights