Javier Fernández Contreras, PhD, is an architect and architectural theorist, and he serves as the head of the Department of Space Design/Interior Architecture at HEAD – Genève. His work explores the relationship between architecture, representation and media, with a specific focus on the role of interiors in the construction of contemporaneity.
NOTHING ABOUT INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
Often dissident, sometimes adherent, Nothing About is, in essence, indefinable because it is adaptive and fluid. Speculative or hands-on, this discipline – if we can call it that – displays all the ambivalences of our contemporary lifestyles: superficial and profound, profane and divine, present everywhere and nowhere, and often regarded as futile, even though it could nonetheless destroy the most beautiful of insides. This book brings together a variety of intellectual tools and insights – polysemic and ambiguous, bespoke and improvised, ornamental and criminal, spanning media, technology, the arts and other, often undefined fields – that analyze the impact of the discipline on contemporary design. In the end, what makes Nothing About charming is that this inside – insofar as it is still defined as such – has only the humble ambition of accompanying beings, both animate and inanimate, within their environment, like a friend who is never far away.
Essays by Camille Bagnoud, Ahmed Belkhodja, Javier F. Contreras, Valentina De Luigi, Valentin Dubois, David Fagart, Line Fontana, Jan D. Geipel, Jean-Pierre Greff, Simon Husslein, Youri Kravtchenko, Paule Perron, Philippe Rahm, Vera Sacchetti, Leonid Slonimskiy, Bertrand Van Dorp, Roberto Zancan, Daniel Zamarbide.
Category: Book. English
Editor/s: Javier F. Contreras, Youri Kravtchenko, Julie E. Julliard
ISBN: 978-90-835325-3-0
© HEAD – Genève, Raphaëlle Mueller
Often dissident, sometimes adherent, Nothing About is, in essence, indefinable because it is adaptive and fluid. Speculative or hands-on, this discipline – if we can call it that – displays all the ambivalences of our contemporary lifestyles: superficial and profound, profane and divine, present everywhere and nowhere, and often regarded as futile, even though it could nonetheless destroy the most beautiful of insides. This book brings together a variety of intellectual tools and insights – polysemic and ambiguous, bespoke and improvised, ornamental and criminal, spanning media, technology, the arts and other, often undefined fields – that analyze the impact of the discipline on contemporary design. In the end, what makes Nothing About charming is that this inside – insofar as it is still defined as such – has only the humble ambition of accompanying beings, both animate and inanimate, within their environment, like a friend who is never far away.
Essays by Camille Bagnoud, Ahmed Belkhodja, Javier F. Contreras, Valentina De Luigi, Valentin Dubois, David Fagart, Line Fontana, Jan D. Geipel, Jean-Pierre Greff, Simon Husslein, Youri Kravtchenko, Paule Perron, Philippe Rahm, Vera Sacchetti, Leonid Slonimskiy, Bertrand Van Dorp, Roberto Zancan, Daniel Zamarbide.
Category: Book. English
Editor/s: Javier F. Contreras, Youri Kravtchenko, Julie E. Julliard
ISBN: 978-90-835325-3-0
© HEAD – Genève, Raphaëlle Mueller
(Eindhoven: Set Margins’, 2025)
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ARCHITECTURE, HUMANITARIANISM, AND SOCIAL MEDIA
This study analyzes how social media represents bodies, spaces, and architecture in humanitarian crises, contrasting the narratives of global institutions and celebrities with those of local organizations and civilians. Developed with MAIA students and based on content from more than 200 accounts across 13 regions affected by conflict and displacement—from Ukraine and South Sudan to the Darién Gap and Bangladesh—it reveals how social media reshapes humanitarian perception in two opposing yet interconnected ways: by distancing attention through passive scrolling and by fostering digital intimacy through close views of victims’ embodied experiences. Architecture emerges as an active agent in these mediated encounters, while algorithms privilege standardized, visually compelling imagery over complex realities.
Data Analytics: (MAIA students in Interior Architecture): Matilde Arletti, Martino De Grandis, Maxime Joost, Lina Laube, Bianca Longoni, Hugo Maia Schmitt, Letizia Milone, Ailyn Pieyre, Célestine Potin, Paul Rigal, Lisa Schober, Kim Schönauer, Karol Szmigielski, Mariannina Thielemans.
Category: Essay. English
Author/s: Javier F. Contreras, Damien Greder
Download Essay (English)
© Samuel Jaccard
This study analyzes how social media represents bodies, spaces, and architecture in humanitarian crises, contrasting the narratives of global institutions and celebrities with those of local organizations and civilians. Developed with MAIA students and based on content from more than 200 accounts across 13 regions affected by conflict and displacement—from Ukraine and South Sudan to the Darién Gap and Bangladesh—it reveals how social media reshapes humanitarian perception in two opposing yet interconnected ways: by distancing attention through passive scrolling and by fostering digital intimacy through close views of victims’ embodied experiences. Architecture emerges as an active agent in these mediated encounters, while algorithms privilege standardized, visually compelling imagery over complex realities.
Data Analytics: (MAIA students in Interior Architecture): Matilde Arletti, Martino De Grandis, Maxime Joost, Lina Laube, Bianca Longoni, Hugo Maia Schmitt, Letizia Milone, Ailyn Pieyre, Célestine Potin, Paul Rigal, Lisa Schober, Kim Schönauer, Karol Szmigielski, Mariannina Thielemans.
Category: Essay. English
Author/s: Javier F. Contreras, Damien Greder
Download Essay (English)
© Samuel Jaccard
2084: A DIORAMA OF THE FUTURE
2084: A Diorama of the Future is an architectural speculation on post-Anthropocene challenges, envisioning a future where some cities lie abandoned while others endure extreme climate conditions. In this scenario, a diverse group of human and non-human explorers parachutes into the year 2084, navigating survival and reconstruction. Unlike 19th-century dioramas that romanticized nature behind glass, this project transforms part of Villa Bagatti Valsecchi’s annexes into a performative device, immersing visitors in damaged landscapes while confronting environmental and societal dilemmas. Within this large space, both performers and visitors take on the role of inhabitants in a changing vivarium, whose evolution challenges the relationship between vision, habitat, and climate change.
Category: Exhibition
Team: HEAD – Genève, Interior Architecture
Awards: Nominee, Créateurs Design Awards 2025
Press: Designboom / Dezeen / hube magazine / Elle décor / Interni / Trendhunter / Adorno Design
© HEAD – Genève. Raphaëlle Mueller
2084: A Diorama of the Future is an architectural speculation on post-Anthropocene challenges, envisioning a future where some cities lie abandoned while others endure extreme climate conditions. In this scenario, a diverse group of human and non-human explorers parachutes into the year 2084, navigating survival and reconstruction. Unlike 19th-century dioramas that romanticized nature behind glass, this project transforms part of Villa Bagatti Valsecchi’s annexes into a performative device, immersing visitors in damaged landscapes while confronting environmental and societal dilemmas. Within this large space, both performers and visitors take on the role of inhabitants in a changing vivarium, whose evolution challenges the relationship between vision, habitat, and climate change.
Category: Exhibition
Team: HEAD – Genève, Interior Architecture
Awards: Nominee, Créateurs Design Awards 2025
Press: Designboom / Dezeen / hube magazine / Elle décor / Interni / Trendhunter / Adorno Design
© HEAD – Genève. Raphaëlle Mueller
Alcova / Milan, 2024
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NOCTURNAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
For centuries, architectural theory has been dominated by solar and diurnal paradigms. References to night in Vitruvius' De Architectura are scarce, as they are in the Renaissance treatises by Alberti or Palladio. However, the night has been, for millennia, a central laboratory in the development of new forms of space. This book offers a first chronological attempt at A Nocturnal History of Architecture, spanning over 2000 years across different geographies and societies. From the elusive darkness of Greek temples to the overlit American suburbia, and from moon-inspired Japanese aesthetics to Italian nightclubs, it reveals how the evolution of human beings and their material environment is inseparable from the night.
Essays by: Sébastien Grosset, Efrosyni Boutsikas, Maria Shevelkina, Murielle Hladik, Maarten Delbeke, Amy Chazkel, Lucía Jalón, Carlotta Darò, Yan Rocher, Alexandra Sumorok, Chase Galis, Cat Rossi, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Hilary Orange, Nick Dunn, Youri Kravtchenko
Category: Book. English
Editor/s: Javier F. Contreras, Vera Sacchetti, Roberto Zancan
Collection: COLUMN (2)
ISBN: 978-3-95905-674-8
Research Platform: Scènes de Nuit
Full book: Open Access
© HEAD – Genève, Morgan Carlier
For centuries, architectural theory has been dominated by solar and diurnal paradigms. References to night in Vitruvius' De Architectura are scarce, as they are in the Renaissance treatises by Alberti or Palladio. However, the night has been, for millennia, a central laboratory in the development of new forms of space. This book offers a first chronological attempt at A Nocturnal History of Architecture, spanning over 2000 years across different geographies and societies. From the elusive darkness of Greek temples to the overlit American suburbia, and from moon-inspired Japanese aesthetics to Italian nightclubs, it reveals how the evolution of human beings and their material environment is inseparable from the night.
Essays by: Sébastien Grosset, Efrosyni Boutsikas, Maria Shevelkina, Murielle Hladik, Maarten Delbeke, Amy Chazkel, Lucía Jalón, Carlotta Darò, Yan Rocher, Alexandra Sumorok, Chase Galis, Cat Rossi, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Hilary Orange, Nick Dunn, Youri Kravtchenko
Category: Book. English
Editor/s: Javier F. Contreras, Vera Sacchetti, Roberto Zancan
Collection: COLUMN (2)
ISBN: 978-3-95905-674-8
Research Platform: Scènes de Nuit
Full book: Open Access
© HEAD – Genève, Morgan Carlier
(Leipzig: Spector Books, 2024)
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