ArtasLabour is a research initiative exploring the fertile ground where urbanism, critical design and emergent technologies converge, through intellectual inquiry and artistic practice.

select projects

ArtasLabour
  • Architectures of Artificial Intelligence
    AofAI is a Design Think Tank focussing on the role architects and urbanists can play in designing the envelopes and networks of future computation. What if our professional input became foundational, at this pivotal moment of technological transformation? Join us to find out.
    Architectures of AI
  • FIELD Bio-arts Platform
    FIELD is a collaborative platform, which investigates how grass-based biomaterials can be a proposition for post-carbon materiality, colonial critique and resilient urbanisms. In collaboration with the artist Supermrin, Jessica Fertonani Cooke & Jil Berenblum.
    Decarbonizing Materials & Construction
  • Mapping Climate Justice NYC
    A climate justice mapping and research project in collaboration with The Waterfront Alliance. Showing how extreme weather events impact socially vulnerable populations in the New York City and the tristate area. In collaboration with Christina Bierring, consultant to the UN.
    Mapping Climate Justice NYC
  • Territorial Research for Migration Crises
    Part I of the Sol y Sombra research project. We modeled the full length of the Venezuelan-Colombian border, crossings, migrants' journeys, informal economies, and what arrival looks like in Colombia. The result is a new proposition on how migration can be mapped and analysed. A Global Free Unit project in collaboration with Alejandro Haiek.
    Territorial Research for Migration Crises
  • The New Rural Lab
    A live research and education lab in the heart of a working Art Park. Topics spanned Art as Labour; Collective Art Production (live-build summer schools); Rural Urbanism; Winter Public Space; Analog vs. Digital in a Post-Work Future; The Virtual Museum; The New Rural. A Global Free Unit project situated in Nikola-Lenivets Art Park.
    The New Rural Lab
  • Geospatial Mapping in the Venezuelan Amazon
    Part II of the Sol y Sombra research project. Mapping the extractivism and ecosystem depletion in the Venezuelan Amazon, we created a Toolkit for Complex Contexts, consisting of a methodology and prototype of a split-screen dashboard for the analysis of large complex territories. A Global Free Unit project in collaboration with Alejandro Haiek.
    New Tools for Mapping the Amazon
world map of ASWS / Art as Labour projects
  • Cafe Ugra
    Cafe Ugra was realised as part of an eco-tourism masterplan, completed for Nikola-Lenivets Art Park in 2014-2015. Off-grid and constructed using local timber and integrated landscaping, furniture and fit-out manufactured by local craftsmen. The cafe provides the main social and civic space for the Park and was opened with a live performance by Mira Calix, WARP Records, on a floating stage.
    Cafe Ugra
  • Sliced White Pavilion
    Created as part of a live-build program at New Rural Lab, this pavilion pairs a permeable wall of birch saplings with a timber-finned roof cut from a single log to form a shaded outdoor classroom. We used local intelligence, locally sourced materials, and combined this with an engineered approach to design to define a new rural aesthetic. In collaboration with Thomas Randall-Page.
    Sliced White Pavilion
  • Nature Based Masterplan
    Project lead on ecosystem services and nature-based solutions on this winning masterplan proposal for Almetyevsk, Tatarstan. An urban oil extraction context became an opportunity to use ecosystem services to remediate the landscape and transform it into a wetland park and cultural heart of the city. PL: Mary Tyulkanova, in collaboration with IQ, Graeme Massie, AECOM.
    Nature Based Solutions in Masterplanning
People
  • formerly
    AdjoubeiScottWhitby Studio
    founded by Xenia Adjoubei & Alex Scott-Whitby in 2012
    Prior to Art as Labour, Xenia Adjoubei was co-founder and director of AdjoubeiScottWhitby Studio, which was the international office of the award winning, London-based design firm ScottWhitbyStudio.
  • Xenia Adjoubei Kwan
    RIBA Assoc.AIA
  • Xenia is an architect, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of urbanism, mobility and ecology. She is a Principal at Systematica in New York City, where she leads US business strategy, building on 15+ years of practice in architecture, urban design, and academic research. She teaches urban design at Pratt Institute and is Researcher at the Global Free Unit, a distributed network for education and research in contexts of rapid change.

    Xenia is a member of the Urban Design Forum's Local Circle and serves on the AIA NY Future of Practice Committee and the advisory board of NYU Schack's Building Better Cities Collaborative. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Oslo Architecture Triennale, and recognized with the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship, British Council Creative Commissions for Climate Change, and Pro Helvetia Artistic Collaboration Grant.

    Previously, she was Director of AdjoubeiScottWhitby Studio, focused on public realm and masterplanning across the UK and Europe, and Associate Director at Studio intO, a female-led innovation and design research agency.
Portfolio & Completed Projects
contact
xenia@artaslabour.com
New York | London
Made on
Tilda