People

About me

I am a doctoral researcher, project manager, and teacher in the School of Architecture at the Faculty of the Built Environment. My research and teaching activities lie at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and critical urban studies. Through research, I aim to understand the production of space from below and investigate how these, often radical, spatial practices can help illuminate alternative ways to address the multiple but interrelated social, environmental, and climate crises. As a teacher, I aim to position these practices within the curricula of sustainable architecture and planning to offer a more critical, comprehensive, and inclusive understanding of the built environment and to elucidate alternative paths for future architects and planners to engage with in practice for the construction of more just and sustainable living future. 

Responsibilities

Currently, I am the project manager and a researcher of T-winning Spaces 2035 (WP2) undertaken within the ASUTUT - Sustainable Housing Design research group. Our work package aims to understand how individuals adapt and arrange their home environments to accommodate their work in order to reimagine and propose more sustainable and just home-working environments for the future. 

I am also a doctoral researcher in the group of urban planning, within the chair of urban planning theory. My doctoral research critically investigates appropriations of abandoned urban spaces in different Latin American cities. I am particularly interested in understanding the grassroots and the motivations behind their actions, the new materialities and meanings they introduce into cities, and the processes involved in order to transform these otherwise derelict spaces into vibrant sites where different activities unfold. In my view, these appropriations and spatial practices represent a legitimate source of knowledge for the construction of more just and sustainable urban futures. 

In addition to doing research, I am currently teaching the courses of Urban Planning and Design Theory 2 and Sustainable Architecture. 

Research topics

• Socio-spatial aspects of sustainable architecture
• Critical urban theory 
• Urban planning theory
• Spatial justice
• Urban activism 
• Grassroots, radical, and insurgent spatial and planning practices
• Narrative and visual methods
• Critical theory, (eco)feminist theory, and decolonial theory
• Home geography
• Home-city geographies
• The home as a space of work
• The home as site of spatial (in)justice

Research unit

Urban Planning Research Group and ASUTUT - Sustainable Housing Design

Research fields

Architecture, urban planning, and critical urban studies.

About me

Panu Lehtovuori is the Professor of Planning Theory at the Tampere University, School of Architecture. Before the current position, he was the Professor of Urban Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Lehtovuori’s research interests focus on contemporary forms of public urban space, new urban design approaches, the resource-efficiency of built environment and the evolution of planning law. Lehtovuori belongs to the Tampere Urban Studies Network TURN and is co-leader of the Urban Planning Research Group. Besides his academic and educational work, Lehtovuori is active in Livady Architects, SPIN UNIT and Nordic Urbanism. Currently, he is permanent expert in the renewal process of the Land Use and Building Act.

About me

Florencia Quesada Avendaño is adjunct professor in World Cultures, University of Helsinki. Trained as a historian her research interests include urban cultural history, sustainable tourism, violence and urban segregation. Currently, her research focuses on Guatemala City, first on a historical analysis of the urban and cultural transformation of the capital between 1880 and 1930. Guatemala City is also the subject of another project that she is involved that looks at fragile cities of the global South, specifically the impact of violence and environmental risks on precarious settlements.