Monday, October 27, 2014

Wonderlab Berlin: FUNDING URBANISM

Wonderlab Berlin: FUNDING URBANISM
October 28-November 1, 2014
Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, Köpenicker Straße 48, 10179 Berlin








As an effect of the economic crisis and social movements in the past decade many actors in architecture and planning recognized that traditional funding models lost their capacity to feed small-scale, community-oriented urban projects. While designers elaborated new methods to address problems of community, participation and ecology, they also created alliances with a new generation of developers and economists as well as law specialists to experiment with new models for funding urbanism. 

For Wonderlab Berlin, the Wonderland Platform for European Architecture invited protagonists of the new civic economy from various European cities to join the Funding Urbanism workshop in Berlin: four days of site visits, public presentations, debates and screenings as well as an exhibition at DAZ. 

Wonderland Platform for European Architecturen is a Vienna-based network for exchanging experiences, information and knowledge for young practices. Wonderlab is a three-part workshop series conducted in cooperation with the European Cultural Foundation (ECF). 

Public Events: 

Wednesday, OCT29 
19-21h Recovering Resources: presentations and roundtable discussion with LCC (Rotterdam), T Spoon (Rome), Architettura Senza Frontiera (Milano), Stealth (Amsterdam/Belgrade) and Fatkoehl Architekten+Urban Catalyst (Berlin). With the participation of Stefanie Raab (Coopolis, Berlin), Luke Haywood (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Berlin) and Michael Lafond (id22 Institut für kreative Nachhaltigkeit, Berlin) 
21h MOVIES IN WONDERLAND: "Life in the Coffin Factory", D.: Alexander Dworschak, Michael Rieper, Christine Schmauszer. A 2013, 48 min. OmeU" 

Friday, OCT31 
19-21h Organizing Regeneration: presentations and roundtable discussion with Ramon Marrades (Valencia), Urbego (Copenhagen), SIC (Madrid), Ateliermob (Lisbon), Homebaked (Manchester), Kristien Ring (Berlin) and Bostjan Bugaric (Ljubljana-Berlin). With the participation of Tore Dobberstein (Complizen, Berlin) and Francesca Ferguson (Urban Drift, Berlin) 
21h MOVIES IN WONDERLAND: Selection of short films on “Funding Urbanism” 

Saturday, NOV1 
11h guided tour at the exhibition

REMINDER : “Urban Ornaments” Exhibition and round table discussion at the Gallery Urban Spree, 2nd November 2014, 5pm

 Urban Ornaments

An ornament – originating from the Latin “ornare” – signifies a material element that is added to a structural form through the process of adornment or decoration. In contrast to this minimalistic definition, however, the concept of ornaments also became to encompass a much broader understanding: social and political considerations are now essential parts of ornaments. Identifying itself with this latest turn of the interpretation of the ornament, the exhibition uses Adolf Loos’ provocative text “Ornament and crime” (1908) as a starting point. The photographic works displayed at the exhibition not only aim to reflect, thus, the Loosian argument from a contemporary perspective, but also try to shed light on the various types of logic behind the aestheticization of urban space.

Artists:

Bence Bakai : “Since 2000 I am a street art enthusiast.Taking photos since i know my self. From 2008 I live in Berlin.”. http://ben-soir.tumblr.com/

Viktor Hodobay : “Basically what I do is street photography. Most of my work is focusing on people and their relations to their artificial habitat, the way they use public space and how their appearance merges into and forms our urban environment.”

Péter János Novák: The hungarian photographer-illustrator Péter János Novák is taking digital photos about urban landscapes since more than two decades.  The presented black and white photos are shots from various european countries, taken with his pocket digital camera short barrelled, pancake lens. http://betonon.tumblr.com/

Ruthe Zunz: With her artistic work, Ruthe wants to overcome boundaries and forge links between people and communities. Her photographs show the familiar features in strangers as well as the unknown in neighbors. She is fascinated by the vibrant metropolis and shares her passion through her photographs. n 1998, she co-founded Walkscreen and continues to work on international artistic collaborations. She has exhibited in China, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan and Finland.
http://www.walkscreen.de/ws_start_e.htm

Roundtable Discussion:

Ayse Nur Erek (Yeditepe University, Istanbul), Nicole Huber (University of Washington), Oleg Pachenkov (European University, Sankt Petersburg), Heike Oevermann (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Júlia Székely (CEU Budapest), Lilija Voronkova (CISR, Sankt Petersburg)

Organized by TACT in co-operation with the Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin
http://theartistandthecity.blogspot.de

Monday, October 20, 2014

CfP: Cities of a new type

Dunaújváros, Hungary, May 21 - 22, 2015
Deadline: Dec 1, 2014
Cities of a new type. New industrial cities in popular democracies after 1945
International conference in Dunaújváros

In the socialist countries after 1945, several cities were erected from scratch next to an industrial complex: the main ones were Dunaújváros (named Sztálinváros from 1951 to 1961) in Hungary, Eisenhüttenstadt (Stalinstadt from 1953 to 1961) in East Germany, Nowa Huta in Poland and Dimitrovgrad in Bulgaria. They were supposed to become cities of a new type, different from the chaotic, segregated and capitalist city. They had to invent a socialist way of life and the population of these cities (mostly workers) did create a specific working class culture, even if it was different from the one that was expected by the authorities. Each city was progressively built through ideological ambitions, but also through concrete constraints and unexpected evolutions. The history of each city has so far been studied and written mostly from a national or regional perspective. We want to consider them from an international point of view and to put them in a comparative and transnational perspective.

We will consider the entire socialist period, from the late 1940s to the late 1980s. That is to say not only the time of the construction (the early fifties) but also the following decades, when the young cities got older and were transformed, according to local factors and according to the transformation of each popular democracy. However, we will not consider the post-socialist period.

The conference will focus on the four above-mentioned cities, but it will also consider smaller new cities (Ózd and Komló in Hungary, Nová Dubnica in Czechoslovakia, Nowe Tychy and Jastrz?bie in Poland, Schwedt and Hoyerswerda in East Germany, etc.) and new districts in already existing cities (for instance, Poruba next to Ostrava in Czechoslovakia or Halle-Neustadt next to Halle in East Germany).

We particularly welcome papers investigating topics such as:

- The comparison between the cities. The conference will examine both the history of the towns (plan, architecture, construction techniques, etc.) and the history of the people who came to the towns (migrations, work in the factory, everyday life, housing, etc.). For each topic, comparisons shed light on unnoticed facts. For instance, putting next to each other the plans of the new cities shows significant differences and leads to think about the urban morphology or about the relationships between the city and the factory. Similarly, comparisons between the pieces of furniture in the new apartments lead to think about design in socialist regime.

- The understanding of exchanges between the cities. Archives give evidence of economic and cultural collaboration, mainly through delegations exchanges. And these exchanges concerned the different involved actors: decision-makers of local authorities, party members, city planners, engineers, workers. What did people from Nowa Huta know from Dunaújváros and Eisenhüttenstadt? In what extent did these cities constitute a network? In this sense, the conference participates in the current historiographical reflection on the economic and cultural collaboration between socialist countries and on the integration of socialist space.

- The question of the models. What was presented and considered as model? In the official discourse, there was only one model: the USSR and its main new city from the 1930s, Magnitogorsk. But the actual influence of the Soviet Union is hard to understand. What was known exactly from the Soviet Union? What was imitated? Magnitogorsk seems to have been very far and actually little known; other building sites, like the reconstruction of Stalingrad, were maybe more familiar. And the USSR founded many new cities, all over its huge territory and during the entire socialist time. What was done with this knowledge? The contribution of specialists in Soviet history would be very appreciated.

Despite the official discourses, Soviet Union was certainly not the only model. The new cities in Eastern Europe also looked at what was done in Western Europe and also outside Europe. These cities were built through different derivatives and borrowings that were put together.

The conference will be held in Dunaújváros and Hungarian researchers will then present hitherto unseen archives from the steel factory Dunaferr: paintings, photographs and various sources about the functioning of the factory or about the daily life of workers (for instance Dunaferr possesses a precious collection of brigádnapló – the diary that each brigade had to write about work and life in the factory). Such archives, which present interesting resemblances with archives from similar cities, will contribute to the historical, nuanced and objective understanding of the socialist way of life.

Please send an abstract of up to 500 words and a brief academic CV to pepperart.dunaujvaros@gmail.com. Deadline for submission of proposals is 1st December 2014. Conference language is English. Funding is available to cover travel and accommodation expenses.

Organisation committee:

Jérôme Bazin, Paris-Est Créteil University.
Mihály Molnár, Pepper Art Projects (Budapest). Dóra Molnár Pepper Art Projects (Budapest).
Gábor Rieder, independent art historian (Budapest).

Scientific board: Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg University), Sándor Horváth (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Dagmara Jaje?niak-Quast (Frankfurt/Oder University), Katherine Lebow (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Research), Andreas Ludwig (Potsdam Center of Contemporary History), György Szücs (Hungarian National Gallery).

Sunday, October 19, 2014

URBAN ORNAMENTS

Two weeks to go to the new group photo-exhibition organised by TACT at Friedrichshain, at the Urban Spree Gallery.

Monday, October 13, 2014

ANCB Lectures -Urban Interplay - Community, Identity and Space

PUBLIC DEBATE 

Urban Interplay - Community, Identity and Space
Saturday, 18 October 2014, 4:00 pm 
Francine Houben, Mecanoo architecten and Benedetta Tagliabue, EMBT

ANCB Lectures on the occasion of the opening of the Aedes exhibitions A People's Palace by Mecanoo architecten and Barcelona RE.SET on the work of the Fundació Enric Miralles 


Francine Houben of Mecanoo architecten and Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT are two of today's leading architects. On the occasion of the opening of the corresponding Aedes exhibitions, ANCB presents lectures by both architects, who share a common focus on the importance of interaction in public space. 

http://www.ancb.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=14706293#.VDv4XRYeLdk

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

CFP: Negotiating Change in Urban Spaces from the Middle Ages to the Present - Oxford

Deadline: 31.10.2014 
This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore the ways in which physical transformations of urban spaces have been negotiated and/or narrated over time. The politics of space continues to attract leading research, especially during moments of palpable transition such as the tearing down of city walls or the rebuilding of war-damaged districts. In these situations, struggles over municipal laws, codes, or regulations, or the changing aesthetics or rhythms of urban spaces illuminate a great deal about how the city has been imagined. They underscore the narratives that urban dwellers, professionals and government officials have told about the built environment and used to influence its transformation. In this sense, the imagined geography, image, role and importance of a city as conceived by a myriad 'interested parties' is as important as its physical reality. However, these rhetorically and visually defined cities never stop taking their legitimacy from the physical city. 

This conference seeks to gather together academics from a number of disciplines interested in this relationship between material change and discourse. Some examples of the many ways in which this can be explored include investigations into the primacy of place in debates over urban change, be it structurally, politically, or socially understood. Likewise, investigations of mental geographies have enriched our understandings of clashes over urban development, through an increased sensitivity to how different forms of borders are created and policed. Other researchers have looked to explore questions of memory or heritage in material change. Indeed, this holds true for a whole range of political, social or cultural ideas. And of course, explorations of the relationship between the local and the global have raised fascinating questions of how urban identities were understood in space and changed across time. 

We are seeking papers that consider the complexities of negotiating and/or narrating urban transformations according to any disciplinary approach. There are no restrictions on geographical region or time period but a reference to change according to one of the following themes: 
- Infrastructural change 
- Changes in housing and/or living standards 
- Changing regulations, including of the sounds, smells and rhythms of urban life 
- Local and/or global relationships in the city 
- Aesthetics or artistic depictions of the city 
- The development of heritage and sites of memory 
- Changing tensions between secular and religious spaces or relationships 
- Policing, surveillance and deviance 

In order to ground the conference discussions in the realities of navigating change in the city, the conference will also include a number of architects and urban planners to help enrich the ways in which we talk about the city. 

The conference will take place at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and will be consist of panels of short summary presentations based on pre-circulated papers of 5-6000 words. There will be no conference fee - coffee and meals including the evening meal are included. Limited funding to subsidize travel costs and accommodation is available, to those without a full wage or institutional support. 

Paper proposals of up to 500 words and as well as an abridged curriculum vitae should be sent to S.R.Davies@swansea.ac.uk by 31 October 2014. The conference language will be English. 

Please address all queries to: Sheona Davies, S.R.Davies@swansea.ac.uk