Coffee & Croissants: Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero and Albert L Refiti

Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero is Associate Professor at the School of Product Design at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá, Colombia. Gutiérrez Borrero visits Aotearoa as a guest of Objectspace and AUT School of Future Environments to share his alternative perspectives on design.

Gutiérrez Borrero is interested in everything that plays the role of design within the traditions and customs of human groups that by decision or situation have exteriority to the Western world.

For this Coffee & Croissants conversation, he will be joined by Albert L Refiti, Professor of Art, Design and Material Culture at Auckland University of Technology. The pair will discuss Alfredo’s research and how his understandings can be considered and applied in an Aotearoa context.

Get your $10 ticket to attend this morning talk with a coffee & croissant in hand.

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Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero (b. 1968, Bogotá, Colombia) is Associate Professor at the School of Product Design at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá, Colombia. In his work Alfredo is concerned with the spatial intertwining and happening of the relationality between diverse futures and pasts, desires and memories, archaeologies and designs – as modalities of actualisation of materiality in the present times. His work has been discussed and presented in various countries in Latin America and Europe, the United States and New Zealand and in 2017 he carried out a doctoral research internship under the direction of Leali'ifano Dr. Albert L Refiti within the AUT School of Art + Design.

Leali’ifano Dr Albert L. Refiti (Samoa: Fasito’outa, Vaovai, Vailima) is Professor of Art, Design and Material Culture at Auckland University of Technology. He is a leader in critical studies research on spatial design and architectural environments in the Pacific, with a focus on material culture and ethnography on the subject. He is co-editor of The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (2018) and Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations (2022). He is a co-leader with Tina Engel-Schwarzpaul and Layne Waerea of the Vā Moana Research Cluster based at AUT’s School of Art and Design. Refiti is currently conducting research funded by the Royal Society Marsden Fund on the history of architecture in Te Moananui with Rau Hoskins.

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Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero is a guest of Objectspace and Auckland University of Technology's School of Future Environments. Read more about his visit here.

Coffee & Croissants is a conversation series supported by our friends at Allpress Espresso and Daily Bread.

Images:

[ Header] Coffee & Croissants at Objectspace, photograph by Yuki Cheung

[1] Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero with the late Pistachio, photograph by Oscar Perfer

[2] Albert L Refiti