Architecture of Territory
Territorial Design in Histories, Theories, and Projects
Theme: My Intelligence

This lecture series sets up an agenda for widening the disciplinary field of architecture and urbanism from their focus on the city, or the urban in the narrow sense, to wider territorial scales, which correspond to the increasing scales of contemporary urbanisation. It discusses the concepts of territory and urbanisation, and their implications for the work of architects and urbanists.
The lecture series consists of 7 core lectures delivered by professor Milica Topalović, and 4 curated guest lectures highlighting the selected theme.

In autumn 2026, the curated guest lectures will focus on the theme of MY INTELLIGENCE, exploring AI–territory relationships. Artificial intelligence may arrive as an abstraction, a model, a prompt, or a prediction, but it impacts territory in multiple ways. Its growing deployment is becoming part of an infrastructural and territorial condition of classification, allocation, governance, and representation. Embedded in diverse decision-making processes, AI classifies land, routes logistics, prices risk, allocates resources, selects targets in contemporary conflicts, determines accessibility, and draws borders. MY INTELLIGENCE will thus ask under what terms these processes should take place, and who gets to decide.

The course will enable students to critically discuss concepts of territory and urbanisation. It will invite students to revisit the history of architects’ work engaging with the problematic of urbanising territories and territorial organisation. The goal is to motivate and equip students to engage with territory in the present day and age, by setting out our contemporary urban agenda.

The lectures are animated by a series of visual and conceptual exercises, usually on A4 sheets of paper. All original student contributions will be collected and bound together.