10/04/2026, 06.00 PM
The Survey as a thick-map
A / P Practice
10/04/2026, 06.00 PM
Talk
When architects discuss surveys, they typically refer to the process of observing and measuring a site in view of its future development. Expanding this notion, the survey becomes more closely aligned with practices of geography and mapping which, through the representation of land, not only describe but also construct and control territories and their inhabitants.
In this presentation, A/P Project — an interdisciplinary collaboration Maya Alam and Daniele Profeta — reflects on these dynamics through a selection of projects developed for Dekoloniale Berlin and the Strelka Institute, alongside work-in-progress from an ongoing collaboration with the Osservatorio Sant’Anna (OSA) in Venice. The work proposes possible strategies to decouple surveying practices from forms of surveillance, with the aim of producing a multimedia thick map that spatializes the complex relationship between the built environment and its inhabitants as part of a broader process of reappropriation.
The presentation by A/P Project will be followed by a conversation with Sabrina Monreale and Lorenzo Perri (Lemonot).
Ph: Birds-Eye view of the initial 3d scan of the Sant’Anna complex in Venice, developed as part of the LiDAR workshop by Syracuse University Florence, and the University of Wuppertal, Germany.
A/P Practice is the interdisciplinary collaboration of Maya Alam and Daniele Profeta. Their work ranges from experimenting with contemporary imaging & surveying technologies to small-scale public installations & built sites of speculative re-use.
Weaving existing conditions with contemporary manufacturing technologies and aesthetics, engaging with the heterogeneous, often contradictory set of evidence of a given context, we focus on constructing inclusive interventions from the screen to the built environment. A/P work has been exhibited at the 2025 Architecture Biennale in Venice, the 2023 North X North Festival at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, the 2022 Dekoloniale Berlin Festival in Germany, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and many others.
Maya Alam is an architect of Indian-German descent. She is junior professor at the teaching chair of Theory and Discourse in Design at the Department of Architecture and Engineering at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. She holds a degree in engineering from the Peter Behrens School of Arts in Düsseldorf and a Master of Architecture with honors from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. She was a fellow of the Schloss Solitude Fellowship 2022–24, a recipient of the Dekoloniale Berlin 2022 residency, and the Harry Boghosian Fellowship 2016–2017.
Daniele Profeta is an Italian architect and designer who currently serves as the Architecture Program Director at Syracuse University in Florence. Daniele holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and completed his undergraduate studies at La Sapienza University in Rome and the KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm. He has previously taught at the Yale School of Architecture, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
