DPR-barcelona

20/04/2026

Over the past week, we had the privilege of participating in the .community annual gathering alongside the wonderful LINA family—our fellow platform members and the new cohort of LINA Fellows. Under the title LINA Blueprints, curated by Federica Zambeletti (), this year offered a moment to reflect on LINA’s first three years.

Our very own and are dpr-barcelona representatives on the .community activities. As platform members we want to express our deep gratitude for the collaborations that keep us actively engaged—projects that inspire us and from which we constantly learn:

The LINA Writing Award, our ongoing collaboration with the and its Education and Learning Manager, Bláithín Quinn, is an initiative that commissions and publishes two books each year. The latest titles ‘Spectres of the Concrete Atlantis’ by and ‘Learning with Ghosts’ by .marie and .leger; along with the past ones ‘Curating Ecologies on Architecture’ by ; ‘Tender and Toxic Tales’ by .xyz; ‘Shallow Time: The Burren’ by and ‘Atlas of Urban Mythologies’ by Sergios Strigklogiannis & Francesca Cocchiara were presented at the LINA Library during Blueprints.

We also had the pleasure of sharing these days with , curators of the 2025–26 edition of , themed ‘Speaking with Your Mouth Full,’ offering a constellation of stories, gestures, and invitations to listen more closely. Each contribution calls for kinship, for care, for reimagining how we live together.

Also featured at the Blueprints LINA Library were collaborative projects such as ‘Planet Krvavica. Surveying Local Futures Through Practices of Imperfect Care’ edited by Ana Dana Beroš and Mika Savela with Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera , co-published with our dear comrades at DAI-SAI. Alongside it, the wonderful ‘Staging Ground: infrastructure, performance, and bodies in movement’ edited by , designed by , and co-published with our friends .

📸:

21/03/2026

Earlier today, we learned that our dear comrades, friends, and distributors suffered from a terrible fire that affected their warehouse in Amsterdam.

We send our deepest solidarity and love to the entire Idea Books team, as well as to all our colleagues who may have lost books in this unfortunate event.

And as they had always taught us, always remember:

READ BOOKS
BUY BOOKS
BUY LOCAL

📚🌱📚🌱📚🌱

20/01/2026

At dpr-barcelona we have been exploring the spaces of reading together as spaces of encounters for several years now. We have initiated spontaneous an intimate events or more institutional readings rooms—and all in between. One of those beautiful projects is the Parasitic Reading Room, convened together with our dear bookworm and partner in crime back in 2018.

Following all those conversations, intuitions, and shared experiences, the past week our very own Ethel Baraona Pohl visited the for the first time, thanks to an invitation by our dear comrade Rosario Talevi (), along with Anders Rubing () and Kandis Friesen (). On the framework of their Mater Studio ‘SPATIAL PRACTICES OF CARE: Reading Together Gender & Space,’ Ethel was invited to organise a workshop and deliver a lecture.

The result was the workshop “What is a library, anyway?” and during two days, together we discussed different approaches to what a library is—a brief summary can be: for Shannon Mattern libraries are platforms and social infrastructures; for Mosab Abu Toha they are critical places of learning and solace; for Alberto Manguel they are a place where ghosts have voices, and for Eric Klinenberg libraries are the palaces for the people. For Borges, the library is a kind of Paradise (or the other way around). Susan Sontag saw it as an archive of longings and Jean-Paul Sartre as a temple.

On those two days, we wandered through the bookshelves, discussed classification systems and methods, their pros and cons; we researched, discussed, and problematised the temporal and spatial dimensions and the relations of power at play in the library. We read aloud together (excerpts from Hélène Frichot’s Dirty Theory to Shannon Mattern’s A city is not a computer, among others); we discussed the concept of “weeding”. We forgot about computers and digital devices and created some beautiful old-school zines; we cooked, eat, and had fun together.

We can only say: Tusen takk Rosario, Anders, and Kandis for the generosity and hospitality, thanks to all the students for the energy, criticality, and freshness of your thoughts and work.

08/01/2026

Performing Architecture
A project by and .space

Performing Architecture is a citywide festival launched in Milan through the collaboration between BASE and DOPO?, which engaged five districts in the southern suburbs—Corvetto, Chiaravalle, Stadera, Barona and Tortona—weaving a symbolic route among cultural centres.

Its goal was to create a laboratory of experimentation capable of generating exercises in collective thinking and fostering dialogue and active participation within local communities. Comprising three essays (by Linda Di Pietro, Salvatore Peluso and Alessandro Pasero) and five conversations with the participating authors, the publication does not celebrate the festival experience but seeks to reinterpret it critically. Rather than attempting to theoretically redefine the boundaries and possibilities of the architectural discipline, the project by BASE and DOPO? stems from a pure desire for experimentation.

This publication goes beyond theoretical speculation, looking at practices from within with the aim of analysing them, bringing new themes to light, and generating repeatable and verifiable protocols.

Title: Performing Architecture
Editor: .pel
Contributors: Paola Carimati, Linda Di Pietro, Marianna Guernieri, Giulia Mura, Alessandro Pasero, Salvatore Peluso, Ludovica Proietti, Teo Sandigliano
Copy-editing: Salvatore Peluso
Design: Mino Buonincontri
Language: English and Italian
Translation: Lori Barozzino
Cover: Soft cover
Size: 13 x 20 cms.
Format: Paperback
Date: October 2025
ISBN: 979-13-990879-2-5
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Publisher: dpr-barcelona

17/10/2025

CONTINUOUS LEISURE

‘Continuous Leisure’ is a project by Esteban Salcedo that sees leisure as a space for experimentation, where small actions can resist the erasure, privatization, and speculation affecting modern architectural heritage, while also imagining shared futures from what still survives.
(...)

TO BE CONTINUED…

***
‘Continuous Leisure’ es un proyecto de Esteban Salcedo que entiende el ocio como un espacio de experimentación, capaz de generar prácticas que se opongan al olvido, la privatización y la especulación sobre el patrimonio arquitectónico moderno, e imaginen futuros compartidos a partir de lo que todavía permanece.
(...)

CONTINUARÁ….

‘Continuous Leisure’ is part of the forthcoming publication ‘Planet Krvavica. Surveying Local Futures Through Practices of Imperfect Care,’ edited by Ana Dana Beroš and Mika Savela with Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera
Publishers: DAI-SAI and
November 2025.

28/09/2025

In his publication ‘Who can afford to be critical?,’ Afonso Matos invites us to reflect on the potential of design to raise awareness of global issues—and on who is entitled to do so. Building on this provocation, the seminar «Care is what ‘becomes’ us» will explore the intersections between critical design and the concept of “care,” through analysis, discussion, and clear propositions.

Christina Sharpe reminds us that “in times like ours, times of great crises—climate catastrophe, human catastrophe, ecofascism, all kinds of fascism, authoritarianism, the complete breakdown of socalled
liberal democracies, and more—great thinkers/writers/makers and organizers across fields, disciplines, and geographies are thinking about, and moving on, bringing another world into view.” In «Care is what ‘becomes’ us» and drawing on Joan Tronto’ approach to care (“Actually, all of the dimensions of care have to be at the right scale.”), the seminar departs from the recognition that practices of care move across scales―from the planet, to the territory, to the city, the community and to the body, and we will critically engage with some of these visions in order to activate collective processes of learning through topics such as care, repair, maintenance, and material kinships, among others.

+++

«Care is what ‘becomes’ us» is one of the seminars of the Contemporary Debates I (What care?) which will be taught by our very own at the .elisava, directed by
for .school. It’s contents build upon a diverse set of references, from books and research projects to dreams and conversations with friends— specially in this case, it draws on the line of thought of the Chair of Architecture and Care initiated by at ETH Zürich (.xyz with , , , .re) in 2023.

17/07/2025

Our very own Ethel Baraona Pohl was invited, a while ago, to contribute to the wonderful , a publication that follows the construction of Lorenteggio’s new Library in Milan.

Ethel’s text, «What is a library, anyway?» took a long time to complete. The invitation to write came during a period of significant personal and professional upheaval—circumstances that ultimately shaped the depth and urgency of their contribution. Over the past two years, it has been impossible to write without the genocide in Palestine looming heavily in mind. «I wonder what I can write or say that is more important than that,» they wrote. The resulting text became a powerful statement on the role of libraries—not just as repositories of knowledge, but as political spaces whose existence and preservation matter profoundly. In a time when Gaza has been reduced to rubble, its infrastructure, buildings, libraries, and thousands of books obliterated—alongside the immeasurable loss of human life—Ethel’s words emerge as a call to resist erasure and to protect memory against destruction.

« As librarians and activists fight to protect libraries from attacks and airstrikes, this text claims the right to Palestine (and all other countries and peoples on this tiny planet) to exist in peace and its right to preserve its culture, history, and its memory through its books and archives.»

So we are incredibly grateful with the editors Jocelyn Froimovich and for the invitation. Thanks to Pietro Pezzani for the translations, and for the wonderful design.

📷 Last but not least, it is a luxury to have the text accompained by the photographic work of the great Guido Guidi.

04/06/2025

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of being part of Public Care, a beautiful, relevant, and necessary program organised by Public Affairs () at Espace Témoin in Geneva.

Our participation took the form of a Parasitic Reading Room convened by our partner in crime Ethel Baraona, with the title «Care is what ‘becomes’ us,» a gathering composed by a set of readings underlying the importance of books as spaces of encounters—understanding the act of reading as a a tool to gather, together, to get there.

«Care is what ‘becomes’ us» takes its title from the words by Sophie K. Rosa on her book ‘Radical Intimacy.’ Using a printed reader as the main device to activate the space, we engaged with a selection of texts on the concept of «care» from a broad perspective, including diverse approaches to identity such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and more. This reader has been assembled with fragments of a wider bibliography in the form of text extracts accompanied by some film stills, photos, and artworks in no specific order, that were read aloud and discussed to sparkle a fruitful and transversal conversation intended to provoke a contagion of knowledge by learning not only from the contents, but from the nuances, the accents, and the cadence of the different voices.

The reading room happened in the best space possible, in bewteen the beautiful installation ‘Public Relations’ by Dafni Retzepi (.re) and the screens displaying Antoine Scalese’s (.scls) film, bothinstallations produced during their residency.

We are so grateful with Public Affairs ( + + ) for the caring process, discussions, and ideas exchange. It’s been the most wonderful experience, also inspired by the themes and research we’re doing at .xyz, with , .re, , , and 😈

Photographies: Valentine Blaimont per courtesy of

21/12/2024

Léopold Lambert at LINA 💫

LINA

22/11/2024

Our distributor always publishing the best yearly catalogue 📚🍁

The latest one designed by is a beautiful piece of printed matter.

Always remember:

READ BOOKS
BUY BOOKS
BUY LOCAL