Leandro Minuchin

Leandro Minuchin was born in Rosario, Argentina. In 2002 he was awarded a Licenciatura in Political Science from the National University of Rosario (first). In 2005 he obtained a MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Salamanca (distinction) where he focused on urban politics and the production of urban infrastructure in neoliberal Buenos Aires. Also in 2005, he completed a MSc in Modernity, Space and Place at UCL (distinction), working on urban political ecology and the emergence of urban discourse in Buenos Aires. In 2010 he completed his PhD, funded by the Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award, on material imaginations and political theory at the Urban Laboratory, UCL. He joined MARC as a Lecturer in Architecture and Global Urbanism in August, 2010.

Further information Leandro's research focuses on the politics of construction and the role infrastructural repertoires play in the consolidation of extended networks of solidarity and association. He investigates how social movements, construction firms, local organisations and developers use the moment of construction to prefigure territorial articulations. He is currently exploring alternative construction practices in Argentina and Ecuador. He has been involved in creating multiple collaborative platforms to investigate and develop alternative urban interventions. He created Material Politics, an architectural research practice that focuses on the fabrication of radical infraestructures.

My research interests revolve around four interrelated themes

Politics of construction: infrastructural repertoires, social movements and local politics

Material imaginations: the role of construction in the crafting of urban futures in Latin America

Material histories: modern architecture, concrete and the invention of urban natures

New materialisms: assemblages, articulation, prefiguration and the moment of construction as theoretical fields