Part Map, Part Myth: Art and Architecture

Artist Louis Pohl-Koseda delivers a talk exploring a new approach to creating civic artworks in his practice. The image is the tool we use to create space in the field of architecture. Design drawings are used at the start of every building process. However, in most civilisations throughout history, spatial images were used as a finish to store meaning within the architecture. In the instance of fresco art, which is an image absorbed into lime plaster which forms part of the wall itself, we often see figures represented within the city, their behaviour and mythological events. Architects were frequently personally involved in the creation of fresco artworks. These artworks, when embedded into a location or space, provide a civic function because they not only exist as a representation of space but also a vision into the ‘collective dreamscape’. The image in space gifts a cultural lens to the viewer. When they walk out of the doors of the building and start their journey through the city, the person sees the world and all of its behaviour with eyes anew. This phenomenon is one reason that Peter Blundell Jones said that architecture’s duty is as a storehouse of memory, something that ‘can never be truly renounced’. Ultimately, architecture has a ‘mnemonic root’. With a practice of making artworks that are part map and part myth, Louis Pohl-Koseda delivers a talk to explore a new approach to creating civic artworks in his practice. Primarily using drawing as a method to move between disciplines, Louis shares a collection of artworks drawn from imagination, recently exhibited in his solo show in Christie’s London (The Dawn of the Golden Age, 2025), and a series of personal short stories that interpret the observed world as a ‘daisy chain of coexisting systems’. This practice of recentring the civic image-making process is one that requires us to rethink the reason for the image-making. How do we reinterpret the sacred, the satirical, and the cyclical nature of time and imagination alongside formal design? The talk culminates in a series of social architecture ‘thought experiment projects’ and spatial agency exercises that attempt to reach some form of reconciliation between the fields of art and architecture. After his presentation, Louis will be joined in conversation by Silvana Taher. Biography Louis Pohl-Koseda is a British multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves between fine-line drawing, painting, and architectural thinking. Born in 1991 and raised in a Hare Krishna community in East London, his narrative-driven works examine the complex social systems, physical environments, and human behaviour shaping contemporary British society. He initially trained as an architect at the University of Sheffield, before founding and directing grassroots community initiatives centred on open public food spaces, common land, housing shortages, and spatial agency. He completed the postgraduate programme at the Royal Drawing School in London and is currently a resident artist at the Topolski studio on London's Southbank. His artwork is recognisable for its precise, automatic draftsmanship. Working primarily from imagination, memory, and social theory his compositions blend perennial art motifs with modern-day anxieties. Using social critique and satire, his works serve as modern-day moral tales, tackling pressing socioeconomic issues. Silvana Taher is an architect and educator whose work considers how we learn to see, describe, and inhabit the world with care. Through drawing, writing, and teaching, she explores architecture as a practice of attention, one shaped by language, bodies, and the shifting ecologies we move within. At the Architectural Association she leads Intermediate 8 and coordinates History & Theory Studies. Her work has been published in AA Concerns, Terrestrial Tales, AA Files, and the Architectural Review, and she regularly chairs discussions and symposia on education, environment, and cultural narratives. Silvana also maintains an observational drawing practice and initiated Covid Windows, a global project gathering images from lockdown interiors. Image: The Arts Cancel (detail), Louis Pohl-Koseda, pen and ink on paper. Accessibility Ramp access to the AA Lecture Hall is available on request using the intercom at the entrance to 36 Bedford Square, and we have an accessible toilet on site. Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these. If you are unable to attend physically but would like to participate in the event remotely please email [email protected].