About UMA

The EURAU26 LATITUDES symposium will take place at Umeå School of Architecture, (UMA) Umeå University. Our department hosts researchers and educators from different latitudes around the world. Shaped by its climate situated only 400km south of the Arctic Circle in Västerbotten county, Umeå is located in southern Sápmi.

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In its third cycle of industrialisation, coined the green transition, Umeå is embedded in a quickly transforming forest landscape, while being strongly connected to its indigenous culture and tradition. Umeå is a city in continuous transformation, in which the University plays a pivotal role. The city is known internationally for being a laboratory for hardcore punk music and as one of the European Capitals of Culture in 2014.

The research environment at Umeå School of Architecture is structured in four main thematic areas: Architectural Design; History, Theory and Critical Studies; Landscape and Urbanism; and Building Construction, Materiality and Computational Design. Our research groups address multiple perspectives in relation to these four thematic areas: Swedish Housing Standards, Designing the Contemporary City, Infrastructures of Care, Designing Cycles at 64°, Architecture and Wood, Making Architecture Politically, Intersectional Ecologies, and Digital Materials. The education at Umeå School of Architecture is organised in studios conceived as experimental laboratories of ideas that intersect with the research groups and define lines of action in relation to contemporary questions of our discipline.

UMA’s research groups and studios contribute at different levels to the international, national and local debate in the field of architecture through active collaborations, both with other departments at Umeå University and with external institutions, organisations, and researchers at local, national and international levels, with implications for policy, practice, and society at large. Our PhD Programme in Architecture acts as a third level of education, adding to the Architectural Programme and Master in Architecture and Urban Design. UMA aims to educate architectural scholars on specific areas of research at the intersections of architecture, urbanism, landscape, and technology from both a theoretical and practical perspective within diverse cultural, social, and political contexts. 

At UMA, we strongly believe in trans-disciplinary and international collaborations. Therefore, the notion of LATITUDES is the main theme for the 12th edition of the EURAU 26 Symposium, hosted for the first time in the Nordics, in continuity with a tradition initiated in 2004 by Farid Ameziane as a platform for PhD schools in the field of architecture. The EURAU26 symposium will open a conversation between researchers across different latitudes on how themes are addressed in relation to situated contexts and critically reflect on the possibilities of this exchange.

We are delighted to welcome you to Umeå University’s Arts Campus, which is our laboratory for practice, research and education. A part of the Faculty of Technology and Sciences, UMA is located alongside the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, UID Umeå Design Institute and Bildmuseet, the university’s contemporary art museum. The UMA building, designed by Henning Larsen with White Architects, is conceived as an open space where students, academic staff, administration and technicians constantly collaborate. Enabling and supporting collaborations across disciplines, departments and faculties, UmArts is Umeå University’s research centre for Architecture, Design and the Arts. The centre creates an exciting interdisciplinary research environment in the visual arts, architecture, design, and creative educational studies.