It’s time to look at public space beyond streets and buildings. Instead, Constructing the Invisible City is a studio seminar that invites you to explore public space as a place shaped by culture, memory, and social habits.

Public spaces are often judged by the quality of their infrastructure. But architecture alone doesn't determine how people choose to inhabit them. Led by artist and architect Nanelle Jayawardene, this session explores the invisible rules and negotiations that shape everyday life in a place, through observation, discussion, mapping, and collaborative making.

You'll begin with a guided walk through Mina Zayed, observing how different spaces shape behavior and interaction. Working in small groups, participants will reimagine selected sites through fictional societies with different values, traditions and relationships to public space. 

Rather than redesigning the architecture itself, participants will explore the social behaviours, customs and encounters that bring these spaces to life, revealing how the same streets can produce entirely different urban experiences.

By the end of the session, participants leave with a new way of understanding their lived environments, one built on social behavior rather than form.

Accessibility & Participation

No prior experience required.

Language: English

About the Instructor

Nanelle Jayawardene is a British Sri Lankan artist and architect based in Abu Dhabi. Her work moves between painting and writing, drawing on her research into public life, ritual, folklore, social presence, spectatorship and mythology. She is interested in people, how they gather, observe, perform, be observed, tell stories and make meaning together. Her work explores the theatre of public life and the ways culture is continually translated through shared space.

Jayawardene studied Architecture at the University of Bath and holds an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Cambridge. Her practice extends into talks, workshops and collaborative projects that bring her research into conversation with others through drawing, storytelling and collective making.