an international platform for strategic thinking making and living better cities
design + culture + education + research + action
co+re is the result of twenty years of immersion into, and explorations of cultural otherness, its expressions and capacities in urban and architectural design in Asia, Australia + Europe.
co+re platform is a collaborative enterprise founded by Darko Radović+Davisi Boontharm, professors, architects, urbanists, educators, researchers and thinkers in the fields of architecture and urban design, who have combined their passion for cities and cross-cultural communication to create this meeting point for borderless exchange, education, research + action.
co+re conceptualises, initiates, organises and, as a hub, (co)hosts diverse cultural, academic and educational activities, which include workshops, symposia, seminars, exhibitions, cultural exchange and travel programmes
in co+re
co is as the co in
context, collaboration, connection, commune, community, communication, company, conception ...
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re is as the re in
research, representation, rethinking, reuse, requalification, recovery, rebuilding, remaking ...
sign + is at the core of our co+re project
co+re seeks "the dignity of bearing the + sign, that of joy,
happiness, enjoyment, of sensuality - the sign of life” *
and to it we only add another, all-important nuance, red colour, the colour of life.
* Lefebvre, H, (2014), Vers une achitecture de la jouissance, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press
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Darko Radović, professor emeritus at Keio University, has taught, researched and practised architecture and urbanism in Europe, Australia and Asia. At Keio, Darko headed an Architecture and Urban Design Research Laboratory co+labo from 2009 to 2021.
Darko’s work focuses at the nexus between environmental and cultural sustainability and situations in which architecture and urban design overlap, where social starts to acquire physical form. His coordinated investigations of the concepts of urbanity and sustainable development focus on culturally and environmentally diverse contexts which expose difference and offer encounter with the Other. He argues that neither the path of ecological nor that of cultural sustainability can be undertaken separately, and indeed that there is no viable future harmonious synthesis.
Davisi Boontharm is an architect-urbanist. Her academic careers stretch from France, via Thailand, Singapore and Australia, and Japan. She is now Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano and University of Ljubljana.
Davisi’s research and teaching field is interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, with strong emphasis on environmental and cultural sustainability.
Her research interests focus on urban requalification and the transformation of creative milieu. Her passion for cities also finds its expression in creative work. Davisi explores "sketch & script" as mean of knowing and the production of knowledge and argues for the importance of artistic sensibility in the investigation of the urban. She had her solo exhibitions in Japan, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia.