Alan Prohm

PhD, MA Program in Environmental Art University of Art and Design, Helsinki

Between Site and Body there is Metabolism

What if architects and town planners were suddenly made responsible for public health? What if licensing and funding within these industries were linked to performance standards, where what was measured was sickness and well-being in the populations served? What if everyone seeking the authority to add to or alter the built environment were required to sign and legally commit themselves to upholding the Hippocratic Oath?

"First, do no harm."

What would things look like then?

Alan Prohm , PhD is an American artist and theorist living in Helsinki.   He teaches architectural poetics and critical urbanist arts in the Masters Program in Environmental Art at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and experimental poetics at the University of Helsinki.   He applies perspectives from the phenomenology and cognitive psychology of spatial perception, and from the political theory of space, to avant-garde and contemporary urban art practices.   He is currently teaching and writing around the work of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, who believe architecture is our greatest tool for learning how not to die.