Eleonora Antoniadou
- Current PhD student
- Architecture MPhil/PhD
Learning from Unlearning: Bodies as Method in 1970s Deschooling Pedagogies
This PhD thesis explores the use of bodies as a method in architectural pedagogy. It investigates how embodied practices can facilitate learning through processes of unlearning, while engaging with critical educational challenges related to ecology, technology, globalisation, and social justice. Grounded in deschooling theories developed in the early 1970s, particularly the work of Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich, the thesis begins by exploring the limitations of institutionalised education and the potential for alternative, self-directed, and participatory forms of learning. While Illich and Freire criticised conventional schooling structures and proposed models rooted in dialogue, autonomy, and experiential exchange, their ideas serve here not as direct pedagogical models but as conceptual frameworks that resonate with a broader ethos of educational experimentation.
Against this theoretical backdrop, the thesis turns to a series of pedagogical experiments in architectural education that emerged during the 1970s, including Global Tools in Florence, the Halprin Workshops in California, and the F+F School in Zurich. These initiatives diverged from traditional classroom structures, adopting instead methods of learning rooted in movement, performance, making, travel, and direct interaction with environments and communities. In these contexts, bodies served not just as passive recipients of knowledge but as active agents for exploration, negotiation, and expression.
By analysing these experiments through archival research—drawing on original materials such as sketchbooks, notes, photographs, and other documentation—the thesis explores how embodied learning practices challenged disciplinary boundaries, rethought the teacher-student relationship, and proposed new spatial and social arrangements for education. It also examines how such practices foreground not only new modalities of learning but also the critical processes of unlearning. These are conceptualised as generative and embodied methodologies for questioning and transforming the institutional norms, hierarchies, and assumptions that often go unquestioned in architectural education.
Rather than advocating a nostalgic return to the 1970s, the thesis asks what it means today to prioritise bodies in education—not as metaphor, but as method—and how this can foster more situated, inclusive, and responsive forms of architectural learning.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
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Supervisors
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More about Eleonora
Biography
Eleonora Antoniadou is an architect, educator, and researcher. Her research focuses on bodies as learning tools in architectural pedagogy and as platforms for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange. She looks at the 1970s as a period when the ideas of the abolition of school and the deschooling movements re-introduced the body into architecture education as a method to understand environment, equality and decolonisation. Since 2012, she has been an architecture educator with teaching experience at several Universities internationally.She is the founding director of Superside Studio, an interdisciplinary practice dedicated to design, construction, and research. Her work and various collaborative projects have been awarded, published, and shown internationally, including at the 16th and 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, the Architectural Association’s Gallery, the Design Museum London and the Benaki Museum Athens.
Degrees
Eleonora holds a degree in Architecture from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an MA from the Architectural Association, and an MRes from the Royal College of Art, where she is currently a PhD candidate.
Awards
2021 Shortlisted for Best New Architecture in Building, Greek Architecture Award, Craft of Canning Museum, Livadia
2021 Distinction, 10th Biennale of Young Greek Architects, Craft of Canning Museum, Livadia
2017 1st Prize, Closed Competition, Urban Installation, Re- Horizon, Ayia Napa
2016 1st Prize, International Competition, Urban Design of the Old City Centre of Strovolos
2016 1st Prize, International Competition, Pafos 2017 EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE, Urban Installation, Green Shower
2016 1st Prize, Closed Competition, Design of CTO’s Expo International pavilions
2012 Shortlisted, National Competition, Emotive Typology: Cyprus National Entry at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale
2010 3rd Prize, International Competition, Rehabilitation of ‘Sednaoui Al Khazendar’, Cairo
2010 Honourable Mention - International Competition, Dasoupoli High School, Nicosia
Exhibitions
2025 Cooke Latham Gallery, London, Group Show: Making Space
2025 Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia, Group Show, Work – Installation: “Gathering as a form of resilience.”
2025 Research Biennale RCA, The Hangar Gallery, London, Group Show. Work: "Dysfunctional Objects"
2023 Research Biennale RCA, “Hopscotch”, Copeland Gallery London, Group Show.
2021 17th Venice Biennale, Cyprus Pavilion, Contributor, Work: System of Options
2021 Benaki Museum, 10th Biennale of Young Greek Architects, Contributor
2020 Design Museum London, Make it Public, Group Work: The Identity Box
2020 Research Biennale RCA, Online Show, Group Show. Work: Between Design and Digital
2019 Thkio Ppalies, Exhibition-performance, Curation+ Installation Design. Work: Superimposition
2018 16th Venice Biennale, Cyprus Pavillion, Contributor, Work: The Craft of Canning Museum
2018 AplusA Gallery, Venice, Co-Curating:All’estero & Dr. K takes the waters at Riva. Version A
2017 Architectural Association, AA xx 100: AA Women in Architecture 1917 -2017, Group Show.
Work: The Craft of Canning Museum
2018 AplusA Gallery, Venice, Co-Curating: All’estero & Dr. K takes the waters at Riva. Version A
Publications
2025 Dimensions Magazine, Issue 12, SPACE Girls. Feminist Self-Organised Models of Learning. (upcoming)
2024 Urgent Pedagogies, Online Publication, Learning – Unlearning.
2021 System of Options, Archive Books, Berlin, Anachoresis: Upon inhabiting distances.
2021 The Craft of Canning Museum, DOMA Publications, Athens, Greek Architecture Awards
2018 I am Where You Are, Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, Venice
2013 COOP Headquarters building, Central Body of Cooperative Institutions, Nicosia
2011 Parallel Practices between Fashion and Architecture, Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus
2009 Regionalism in Development Policy, Architectural Association, London
Conferences
2025 Speaker, DUS 2025, Univesity of Brighton
2025 Speaker, AHRA PhD Symposium, Spatial Justice, Leicester
2025 Speaker, Learning from the Mountains, Celadon Centre for Arts and Ecologies, Nicosia
2025 Key Speaker, EASA Nicosia Edition, SESAME, Nicosia
2025 Speaker, RCA Research Biennale Conference, London
2024 Speaker, Body Maters, AHRA 2024, Norwich
2024 Speaker, DocTalks 2024, Zurich
2024 Speaker, Learning / Unlearning, KTH School of Architecture Stockholm
2024 Speaker, EM24 EURAU International Conference, Milan, Italy
2024 Speaker, Body Matters, AHRA 2024, Norwich of Architecture, Stockholm
2021 Key Speaker, Cypriot Women in Architecture, UIA Symposium, Cyprus
2020 Speaker, 3rd Annual MRes Architecture Colloquium, RCA, London
Workshops
2025 Founder and Organiser, "The table of Unlearning", RCA Research Conference London
2020 Founder and Organiser, “Paper, Rock, Scissors“ , RCA MRes Students, London
2019 Co-Founder and Co-Organiser, ”Citings”, Urban Design Student Workshop, London
2015-2018 Co-Founder and Co-Organiser, “XS Summer Workshop”, Design and Making, Cyprus
2015 Co-Founder and Co-Organiser, ”Urban Embryos”, Urban Design Student Workshop, Cyprus
2014 Instructor, “Sudesco”, Summer Students Workshop, Ayia Napa, Cyprus
2013-2018 Founder and Organiser, “Building Fashion Workshop”, Interdisciplinary workshop, Nicosia
2013-2018 Instructor, Summer Students Workshop, Design of Medical Care Centre Nairobi Kenya