Eleonora Antoniadou
- Current PhD student
- Architecture MPhil/PhD
Learning Unlearnings: Bodies as Method across Architectural Pedagogies, c. 1966–1975
Between 1966 and 1975, workshops, summer schools, short courses, independent schools and university initiatives brought bodily action into a wider reconsideration of how architecture could be learned. These pedagogies relocated learning into workshops and landscapes, as well as streets and everyday environments. This shift changed how knowledge was formed and where pedagogical authority rested while reshaping the relationship between learning and disciplinary practice. The thesis interprets these processes as forms of unlearning shaped through direct experience and bodily action.
The reconsideration of architectural learning formed part of the international educational crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Educational expansion intensified questions about institutional purpose and the governance of learning. Student and worker movements challenged established relations of authority as liberation struggles brought social difference and collective agency into pedagogical debate. Deschooling critiques associated with Ivan Illich and Everett Reimer questioned institutional control over learning, while Paulo Freire connected education with dialogue and transformative action. Free schools and self-organised projects gave distinct forms to the search for other ways of learning. Within this historical field, unlearning names a critical and generative process through which inherited relations to knowledge and authority were questioned and reorganised. Its varied forms produced situated unlearnings shaped by the social and material conditions of each setting.
The argument develops through three case studies, each reconstructed through its particular historical and institutional conditions. Global Tools connected a critique of design culture with elementary tools and direct engagement with materials. The Halprin workshops used scores to structure encounters between movement and environment, allowing experience to support collective reflection. At F+F, interdisciplinary teaching developed through feminist critique and collective organisation as students and tutors reworked institutional and social relations. Across these pedagogies, bodily action acquired more explicit significance as a way of forming and sharing knowledge.
Archival research reads programmes and correspondence alongside photographs and films, supported by surviving scores and notes. The analysis reconstructs how embodied practices were organised and considers the relationship between stated pedagogical aims and their enactment. It follows the effects of tools and instructions on bodily action, together with the role of facilitation in shaping authority. Questions of access and labour reveal the conditions under which particular bodies entered these settings and became visible within the historical record.
Bringing these histories into relation allows the thesis to develop Bodies as Method as an analytical framework for understanding how bodily action, mediation and pedagogical relations produced architectural knowledge. Bodies became methodological when action and experience were deliberately organised as part of an investigation. The knowledge that emerged was situated and relational because its form depended on the bodies involved and the conditions under which they acted. Bodily difference and access were integral to its formation, alongside facilitation, authority and labour. Bodies as Method provides a historically grounded account of how embodied practices contributed to architectural knowledge and the unlearning of established disciplinary relations.
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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
2026 1st Price, Best Realised Work in Cyprus, Greek Architecture Award DOMA
Work: Modular Commonscapes with NOW SPACE CLUB
2026 Shortlisted, Best Realised Work in Cyprus, Greek Architecture Award DOMA
Work: House in Costi Palama
2021 Shortlisted, Best New Architecture in an Existing Building, Greek Architecture Award DOMA
Work: Craft of Canning Museum, Livadia
2021 Distinction, 10th Biennale of Young Greek Architects
Work: Craft of Canning Museum, Livadia
2017 1st Price, Closed Competition, Urban Installation
Work: Re-Horizon, Ayia Napa
2016 1st Price, International Competition, Urban Design of the Old City Centre of Strovolos area
Work: Slow – City, Slow your senses
2016 1st Price, International Competition, Pafos 2017 European Capital of Culture
Work: Green Shower
2016 1st Price, Closed Competition, Design of CTO’s Expo International pavilions
2012 Shortlisted, National Competition, Cyprus National Entry at the 13th, Venice Architecture Biennale- Work: Emotive Typology
2010 3rd Price, International Competition, Rehabilitation of ‘Sednaoui Al Khazendar’, Cairo
2010 Honourable Mention, International Competition, Design of Dasoupolis School, Nicosia
Exhibitions
2025 + 2026 Group show, Benaki Museum, Athens,+ CCA Rethymno. Work: Body in Build
2025 Group Show, Cooke Latham Gallery, London. Work: Making Space
2025 Group Show, Thkio Ppalies, Work – Installation: “Gathering as a form of resilience.” , Nicosia
2025 Group Show, Research Biennale RCA, The Hangar Gallery, London, Work: Dysfunctional Objects
2023 Group Show, Research Biennale RCA, “Hopscotch”, Copeland Gallery, London
2021 Contributor, 17th Venice Biennale, Cyprus Pavilion, Work: System of Options, Venice
2021 Contributor, Benaki Museum, 10th Biennale of Young Greek Architects, Athens
2020 Group Show, Design Museum London, Make it Public, Work: The Identity Box, London
2020 Group Show, Research Biennale RCA, Online Show. Work: Between Design and Digital, London
2019 Curation+Design, Thkio Ppalies, Exhibition-performance, Work: Superimposition, Nicosia
2018 Contributor, 16th Venice Biennale, Cyprus Pavilion, Work: The Craft of Canning Museum, Venice
2018 Co-Curation, AplusA Gallery, “All’estero & Dr. K takes the waters at Riva. Version A”, Venice
2017 Contributor, Architectural Association, AA xx 100: AA Women in Architecture 1917 -2017,
Work: The Craft of Canning Museum
2015 Group Show, Point Gallery, Cyprus Puzzle Collective, Work: Xs Summer workshop, Nicosia
Publications
Eleonora Antoniadou (2025), “SPACE Girls. Feminist Self-Organised Models of Learning”, in Amabile, Ascolese, Calderoni, Perri, Morreale (eds.), Knowledge of Form as Form of Knowledge, Dimensions Journal, Issue 12
Eleonora Antoniadou (2025), ”Learning with nature. Halprin Pedagogical Experiment” in Antaki, Ashton, Brandão, Carvalho, Göthlund, Kautsky, Krasny, Reisinger, Salama, Schalk, Talevi (eds.) Learnings/Unlearningsin Urgent Pedagogies Journal (IAPSIS)
Eleonora Antoniadou (2024) “Global Tools: The Body Workshops” in Bovati, Moro, Villa (eds.),
In-presence/ The body and the Space, Milan: Pvblica, ISBN 978-8-89958640-9
Eleonora Antoniadou and Nayia Savva (2021), “System of Options” in Christodoulidou, Savvides, Vanezis, Varnavas (eds.), Anachoresis: Upon Inhabiting Distances, Belin: Archive Books, ISBN 978-3-948212-75-9.
Eleonora Antoniadou (2021) “The Craft of Canning Museum”, in Diener, Herreros, Pizzigoni (eds), GAA, Athens: DOMA Publications
Eleonora Antoniadou, (2018), “Cane. Learning, Designing, Exhibiting” in Hadjichristou, Swiny, Antoniou (eds), I am Where You Are, Venice, UNIC
Eleonora Antoniadou, (2011), Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, Nicosia: MECC
Conferences
2026 Speaker, CAA, Chicago
2026 Speaker, Questions 11, Romania
2025 Speaker, ATUT- Radical Care, Finland
2025 Speaker, Mediating Matter(s), Ottawa
2025 Speaker, Contemporary Art Urbanocene and the more than human word, Rennes
2025 Speaker, Spatial Justice, AHRA Phd Symposium, Leicester
2025 Speaker, DUS 2025, University of Brighton
2025 Speaker, Learning from the Mountains, Celadon Centre for Arts and Ecologies, Nicosia
2025 Keynote Speaker, EASA Nicosia Edition, SESAME, Nicosia
2025 Speaker, RCA Research Biennale Symposium, London
2024 Speaker, Body Matters, 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
2023 Speaker, RCA Annual PhD Symposium, London
2021 Keynote Speaker, Cypriot Women in Architecture, UIA Symposium, Cyprus
2020 Speaker, 3rd Annual MRes Architecture Colloquium, RCA, London
2015 Speaker, Stock & Reuse Architecture Symposium, Artos Foundation, Cyprus
Workshops
2025 Founder and Organiser, "The table of Unlearning", RCA Research Conference London and 2026 LFA
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