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UCL Urban Laboratory Urban Circular: news and events
Urban Circular
 


To add an event listing or other notice to the Urban Circular, email it as text to urbanlaboratory@ucl.ac.uk 

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www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab



EVENTS

Stadtklang: new music event

Sunday 24 March, 7-11pm
Arcola Theatre Bar, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL 


Please join us for the first ever Stadtklang night on Sunday 24 March. This is a new music evening run through the UCL Urban Laboratory and held in the Arcola Theatre bar in Dalston, Hackney. It’s free-entry and the perfect way to round off your weekend.    

We’re very pleased that for the forthcoming Stadtklang we’ll be joined by Dusk and Blackdown. With a regular radio show on Rinse FM and their Keysound Recordings imprint, Dusk and Blackdown are leading explorers and exponents of London’s underground music and pirate radio culture. They released their Dasaflex album last September and Margins Music in 2008, an audio journey through the disparate edges of contemporary London. The Urban Lab’s very own Louis Digital (Unspecified Enemies/Numbers) and Dexxual Harrisment will be providing further sounds of the city.

The Arcola theatre is only 100 metres from Dalston Kingsland and Dalston Junction on the Overground, and with plenty of buses passing nearby. Further directions.

Check out the Stadtklang Soundcloud and Tumblr, and the Facebook page. 
 

UrbanLab Films in collaboration with Artakt, Central St Martins and LSHTM present London Flows

Tuesday 26 March, 6pm
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT

An interdisciplinary evening of films, audio, readings and talks exploring the swirling debates about water quality and infrastucture in London after John Snow, featuring:

Emma M. Jones, reading from her forthcoming book Parched City (Zer0, 2013), a popular history of London's drinking water through the lens of contemporary discussions of sustainability. Emma will also play an audio recording of Metropolitan Water Board water engineers reminiscing about their work during WW2, and will show Keeping London on Tap, a Thames Water corporate video promoting the Beckton desalination plant, in order to reflect on current perceptions of London's tap water origins and quality.

Cultural and architectural historian Barbara Penner, author of Bathroom (Reaktion, 2013), on Joseph Bazalgette's 1849 plan for urine harvesting and his later role in the construction of London's sewers.

Architectural design research practice Smout Allen on their speculative design project for London's Hydro Infrastructure, a proposal for an oasis that manages, distributes and displays water, river flood, sea surges and rain fall, concentrating and localising the infrastructure as an alternative to the extensive and embedded systems global cites presently rely upon.

Anthropologist Bruno Rinovulcri will present highlights from Tunnel Visions, a ten part series in which he duped a collection of writers, musicians, activists and academics into wading knee deep through the swollen rivers of sewage and miles of forgotten sewers that stretch beneath London’s surface. Safely esconced in the London’s effluvia, Tunnel Vision’s troglodytes explored this hidden and somewhat mysterious subterranenan environment sonically and historically, leading us through a narrative of fact, fiction, anthropology, architecture, activism, music and sound.

Image: City of London, London Metropolitan Archives. Reproduced with kind permission from Thames Water. 


Urban Salon. Transnational Soup: Translating Local Integration Policies Across Borders

Wednesday 20 March, 6pm 
Exhibition Room, G07, Pearson Building, Gower Street, London

Hannah Jones, Research Associate, Department of Social Policy and Criminology, The Open University and Ben Gidley, Senior Researcher, Centre on Migration Policy and Society, University of Oxford

Discussant: Prof Allan Cochrane, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University

Abstract: This paper explores how European cities develop and innovate in policies for migrant integration, and how these policies might be researched transnationally. It is based on empirical research[1] into the role of local and regional authorities in integration, and the importance of communication and public attitudes. Our research suggests that adoption of promising practices might be most effective when more radically adapted to suit local contexts. The paper reflects on the methodological problems of comparison and how municipalities might learn from each other despite these challenges. We relate this to broader theoretical discussions about the possibilities of comparison in urban studies, and the particular problems of methodological and conceptual nationalism. While not arguing for a return to these reductive approaches, we argue that in policy implementation as well as in theoretical work, it is necessary to recognize the complexities of local and national context when translating practice.

All are welcome, please circulate widely to interested researchers and students who are invited to subscribe to receive notices at www.theurbansalon.org. We usually stay for a while after the talks to meet fellow urban researchers from across London colleges, do bring drinks/snacks to share.
 

UEL Seminar Series. Beyond 2012: the Olympics and the Regeneration of East London

Wednesday 20 March, 5.30 - 7.30pm
London Legacy Development Corporation, Level 10, 1 Stratford Place, Montfichet Road, London E20 1EJ


The Sustainable City: Challenges and Opportunities in East London

Economic growth is intrinsic to policy ambitions for the economic and social renewal of East London, and the convergence of its living conditions with those offered elsewhere in the city. Managing the environmental impact of that growth however will be a major challenge. Currently the average resident of East London has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than the London average. How can we decouple the economic growth we need from adverse environmental consequences we can no longer afford, and achieve growth sustainably?

This is a challenge but is also an opportunity. The huge scale of change anticipated in East London creates scope to embed new ways of doing things, in terms of development, but also in terms of personal behaviour and urban management. Existing infrastructure networks provide solid foundations on which to build. East London is already in the vanguard of policy awareness to develop a sustainable future for London, and the focus of initiatives to exploit the business opportunities which sustainable growth is beginning to generate. 

Guest Speakers:

Bruce McVean is an Integrated Design Manager and works as a consultant for Beyond Green, where he helped prepare a report for the Host Borough Unit on a strategic sustainability framework for East London. Bruce previously worked as a Senior Policy Advisor at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). He was responsible for developing and communicating CABE’s policies on sustainable design and climate change, public buildings, health and public space. Before that he managed a number of regeneration projects in Hackney and Lambeth while working as a consultant for Renaisi.

Samantha Heath is the Chief Executive of the London Sustainability Exchange, one of the most experienced and well established organisations working at a strategic level to promote sustainability in London. She was a member of the London Assembly from 2000-2004, during which time she was a member of the Transport Committee, chaired the Environment Committee and also co-chaired the London Sustainable Development Commission. 

Chair: 

Professor Allan Brimicombe is Head of the Centre for Geo-Information Studies (CGIS) at UEL and he has been the lead researcher on various projects related to the London 2012 Games. Together with his CGIS colleague Dr Yang Li and teams of researchers from across UEL and other institutions, Professor Brimicombe has been conducting the Olympic Games Impact (OGI) studies, commissioned by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) on behalf of LOCOG. The OGI studies included, for instance, the Pre-Games OGI covering the period 2003-2010, a Value Study of the £9.3bn public sector financing of the London 2012 Games for LOCOG, and the Games-Time OGI study which was completed in December 2012.

Registration: Participation is free, but places are limited. To book a place, please email Sue Isaac (s.isaac@uel.ac.uk) or Dr. Valerie Viehoff (v.viehoff@uel.ac.uk).
 

Social Design Talk 9: Ethics in Practice

Wednesday 20 March, 7pm - 8.30pm
Darryl Forde Seminar Room, Department of Anthropology, UCL, London 


Speakers:
Dr Adam Drazin, Co-ordinator MA Culture, Materials & Design, Department of Anthropology
Mary Rose Cook, Co-founder and managing director, Uscreates

This session will focus on practical ethics in the context of research and design in relation to pubic/collective/social issues. As the series up until now has shown, there are lots of designers  managers and entrepreneurs doing research and engaging users and stakeholders in participatory processes, but with sometimes limited consideration of ethical issues. Adam and Mary will share perspectives from their work on ways of thinking about these issues, and highlight some projects which bring them to life. 


RSVP to joe.julier@policyconnect.org.uk 020 7202 8588

This is the ninth in the Social Design Talks series, a partnership between Policy Connect, the V&A and the University of Brighton. The series aims to reflect critically on the spread of socially-motivated design practice and the use of 'design thinking' within social innovation and public policy. 

socialdesigntalks.org
 

Former West. The Spatial-Cognitive Fix: The Urbanization of 'Homo Economicus' 

Thursday 21 March, 5pm 
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin

www.formerwest.org

As part of Former West: Documents, Constellations, Projects, an art-theory conference, Louis Moreno (UCL Urban Laboratory), will be giving a talk on transforming urban politics and technologies of neoliberalism. The talk will be live-cast, please check the website for details. 

Abstract: With the crisis of 2007–2008, “the city” has become a crucial conceptual object conditioning the political economic imaginations of the left and right. For anti-capitalists the rise of austerity urbanism has opened up the prospect of a Lefebvrean “right to the city” to resist an intensive spatial concentration and centralization of capital by occupying sites that might arrest the flow of capital. Alternatively, for World Bank technocrats, the urban manifestation of economies of scale, technological change, and cultural diversification represent a way to extend the market potential of globalization. Despite this polarization, each faction recognizes the city as a kind of socio-spatial infrastructure crucial to the planetary circulation of capital. But while neo-Marxian theory has long been preoccupied with cities in terms of the historical dynamics of capital accumulation, the interest of mainstream economics in socio-spatial institutions represents a profound epistemological break. I want to draw on social theorist Michel Foucault’s 1979 disquisition on the “crises of liberalism,” and Marxist geographer David Harvey’s analysis of “accumulation by dispossession” to throw this transformation into perspective. What has precipitated this shift of liberal theory from the high ground of macroeconomics to the micro-politics of collective consumption? What is the political significance of this “elaboration of the powers of public authorities” into the external, open, creative field of everyday life? I argue that we might view this urban rationalization of economic subjectivity as, in itself, the articulation of a new kind of “cognitive infrastructure,” one underpinning a new urban “art of government.”


Wick Session #9: Affordable Works Space

Friday 23 March, 6-7.30pm
Unit 1, Victoria Wharf, 10 Stour Road, London E3 2NT

WICK SESSION #9 is hosting a late afternoon of talks on the subject of affordable workspace in and around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The event will be held at Unit 1 Vittoria Wharf, the home of a wide range of young innovative and creative enterprises, who's futures are increasingly uncertain due to the recent compulsory purchase through their property for a bridge to the Olympic park.

Richard Brown will be presenting his campaign project 'affordable neighbourhoods'; an alternative proposal for the design, construction and provision of affordable work space on an interim basis on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; the work draws on the collective self-build studio culture in Hackney Wick and Fish Island, proposing a design build mechanism enabling the fleeting creative classes to settle in to this publicly owned new bit of city. www.affordablewick.com

Liza Fior, muf will draw on the work by muf in HW/FI over the last 4 years and in particular, the report Sustaining Creativity , which asked what would it take to keep affordable workspace in Hackney Wick and Fish Island.www.muf.co.uk

Tom Fletcher from the people's kitchen will talk about his use of the Vittoria Wharf shared work unit for his food recycling business; re using discarded fruit and veg from whole sale markets for banquets as well as locally distributed Re-Juiced soft drinks. 

The Spring Swing Banquet will follow the Wick Session.

www.rejuce.co.uk

Anna Harding will present the Change.org campaign to save creative workspace from the unintended consequence of planning policy changes. Eric Pickles, Secretary of State, DCLG intends to relax planning requirements so that developers can change office premises to residential without needing planning permission. This relaxation in planning does not guarantee affordable housing. The unintended consequence is the risk to jobs that may damage growth sectors in the economy such as creative and tech industries. www.spacestudios.org.uk

Visit the petition page to support the campaign

Lewis Jones from Assemble will present the benefits and pitfalls of a number of approaches to 'building beyond your means' that Assemble have employed in their projects, ranging from ramming rubble, speaking in different languages, repurposing off-the-shelf industrial components, involving volunteers and being neighbourly. www.assemblestudio.co.uk


Design Culture Salon 4: How does design function in a recession? 

Tuesday 26 March, 7-8.30pm
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, V&A


Panelists:
Irena Bauman (Bauman Lyons Architects)
Jeremy Till (Central St Martins)
Bianca Eizenbaumer and Fabio Franz (Brave New Alps)
Louis Moreno (UCL Urban Laboratory)

These are tough times for all creative fields. Some practitioners baton down. Others see the economic slowdown as an opportunity to rethink what they do. Can design really re-invent itself or will it be ‘business as usual’? How might scarcity impact on urban culture? What can be done with all those unemployed designers? How does a recession impact on public practices?

Free, but booking is essential: http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/1971/date/20130326/
 

KCL Cities Seminars 2013

Seminars and events for the Spring term
 
28th March, 5-6pm. ‘Circles of Sustainability’. Prof. Paul James (Visiting Professor, King’s College London, Global Cities Institute, RMIT).
 
Unless stated otherwise, events take place in the Pyramid Room: Geography Dept., 4th floor, Strand Campus, King’s College and will be followed by a wine reception in the Geography Social Space.
 
All welcome – contact Sophie (sophie.elsmore@kcl.ac.uk) or James Field (james.field@kcl.ac.uk) for more info.

 

Open Charter Agency

27 February - 27 April

Public works in collaboration with Urban Projects Bureau and Owen Pritchard are launching  'Open Charter Agency' at RIBA (Royal institute of British architects).

Open Charter Agency is a platform for discussion and action for the architecture profession and those disciplins involved with architecture to clarify, critique and act upon critical issues determining the wider role of the architect and their identity as a catalyst for change.

Open Charter Agency supports politicised and experimental practices that are searching for change within and outside of the accepted norms and codes of the established profession.

Open Charter Agency is motivated by a desire to reaffirm the social, ethical and political qualities of contemporary spatial practice that are vital to the progress of society and the architect as a valuable agent in the world.

What we are doing

Open Charter Agency was conceived after extensive direct research into the image, role and definitions of the architect around the world, collecting over 5000 voices which revealed widespread confusion and fear of architecture as a profession. You can see all these profiles and comments at the RIBA exhibition.

There are a number of ways to participate and offer your thoughts:

Open Charter Agency at the RIBA
Three afternoons a week, the OCA will be in residence at the RIBA. Here you will be able to contribute to the ideas further and look through the research that underpins our current themes. 

Activism in Architecture

Empowerment

Architects in residence

Knowledge transfer and models of learning

Visitors can also feed back at the residency desk when it is unmanned.  It is possible to record comments under the themes on the wall, which will be collated and incorporated into the discussion evenings.

Open Charter Agency Discussion Forums:
Over the course of five events we will be inviting speakers and guests to participate in critical conversations surrounding alternative modes of architectural engagement within the built environment. We invite you to join us to offer ideas, criticism and support for the OCA and play an integral part of forming and informing this way of working.

The four themes for the evenings have been established in response to the thousands of submissions we gathered on our research trips and through the installation at the Venice Biennale.

25th March – Opening Discussion - Open Charter Agency

9th April – Architects in Residence

16th April – Knowledge exchange and modes of learning

20th April - Empowerment

23rd April – Activism

Please check http://open-charter.net/  for research up to Venice Biennale.


NOTICES


Architecture_MPS Call for Articles


The academic journal ARCHITECTURE MEDIA POLITICS SOCIETY is calling for articles for forthcoming editions in 2013. Its themes revolve around the relationship of architecture(s) with questions of the politics, media and society. Its remit can be broadly defined as a socio-political consideration of the built environment.

Areas of interest include (but are not restricted to): architecture, urbanism, regeneration, heritage, cultural and political identity, human geography and the mediated representation and environments. 

Multidisciplinary papers are welcomed as particularly pertinent to the journal’s diverse perspective. Papers with a historical focus are welcome.

The journal publishes one article monthly online and has a print edition on a two year publication cycle. Please submit abstracts, works in progress or completed texts for consideration. 

http://architecturemps.com/
 

Unity/Disunity: An Interdisciplinary Conference

27-28 June 2013, UCL 
Deadline for submissions 28 March 2013

UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS)

UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES)
 

"In union there is strength." Aesop

"You cannot conceive the many without the one." Plato 

"The principle of contradiction makes the thought of unity the measure of heterogeneity." Theodor W. Adorno 

"In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance." Jeanette Winterson

The conference organisers invite proposals for papers relating to the connected themes of unity and disunity from scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines. We welcome papers dealing with historical as well as contemporary sources from Europe and beyond, from any disciplinary or inter- disciplinary perspective. Proposals for panel discussions, performances, artistic installations and workshops are also welcome.

The aim of the conference is to interrogate the concepts of unity and disunity from a variety of perspectives. These perspectives might encompass the following, though other interpretations are of course gladly received:

Does unity mean homogenisation or the harmonious coexistence of different voices?

Does disunity mean opposition and conflict, or is it a space for creative difference?

How have models of unity and disunity, of order and chaos, influenced creative works?

What fractures and disunities exist within apparent unity?

Submissions may deal with the theme of unity/disunity as a concept in itself, or with unity/disunity in relation to other topics, including but not limited to:

Identity/cultural heritage

Creativity & the arts

Language

Religion, ethics and morality

International/regional politics

The global economy

Interdisciplinarity as a discipline

Physical/psychological space

Please send in an abstract (250 words), 5 keywords and a brief biographical statement (50 words) to thoughtsforward@gmail.com . Deadline for submissions is 28th March 2013.

Visit the blog for updates and practical information: unitydisunity.wordpress.com

For further information contact Elizabeth Harvey - elizabeth.harvey@ucl.ac.uk
 

Call for papers. Olympic Legacies: International Conference - Impact of Mega-Events on Cities

4-6 September 2013
New deadline: 29 March 2013


International Conference: Olympic Legacies and Impact of Mega-Events on Cities
University of East London, Docklands Campus, 
 
This international conference is designed to bring together researchers, policy makers, representatives of national and international bodies and institutions and anyone interested in and engaged with urban development issues arising from hosting mega- events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Football World Cup, International Fairs, etc.
 
The aim of the conference is to provide a space to share and exchange knowledge that is focused on, for instance, but not exclusively, the following key themes:
·      The Changing Urban Order and Mega-Events
·      Evaluating Legacy
·      Future Mega-Event Cities
 
Highlights of the conference programme include:
·         Opening keynote by Dr. Juan Clos (Executive Director of UN-HABITAT and former Mayor of Barcelona)
·         Closing keynote by Prof. Lamartine DaCosta (Professor of Olympic Studies, Universidade Gama Filho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
·         Guided field trip to the newly opened Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
 
Call for Papers
The conference organisers are inviting papers from researchers, academics, practitioners and postgraduate students from around the world.  Please send your abstract of no more than 300 words to submission.legacyconference@uel.ac.uk before Friday, the 29th March 2013 (NEW deadline!)  Or, if you would like to organise a session on a particular topic, please contact Dr. Valerie Viehoff (v.viehoff@uel.ac.uk).

Please see www.uel.ac.uk/legacyconference  for further details.
 
 

Call for papers. Architecture and Culture, vol.1, issue 1/2, November 2013  

Call for papers. Architecture and Culture, vol.1, issue 1 / 2, November 2013
Deadline: 2 April 2013
 

Architecture and Culture, the new international, peer-reviewed journal of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA), investigates the relationship between architecture and the culture that shapes and is shaped by it. 
 
The inaugural double issue of the journal is entitled Discipline and Dissidence. Our aim is to investigate how the now expanded field of architecture is framed and understood as a discipline, what disciplining processes are at play, and what the cultural consequences are for its role of such strictures and how they shift. The issue is in two parts. One part focuses on ‘Discipline’, the other on ‘Dissidence’. Papers for the ‘Discipline’ part, addressing architecture’s disciplinarity, are solicited through this call. It is hoped that placing the two themes will agitate and elucidate both, in perhaps unexpected ways.

‘Discipline’
 
Editors: Dr. Igea Troiani and Diana Periton
 
Architecture as a field of practice, knowledge, and education is broad in its scope and range of methods, both practical and theoretical. It has been called a ‘weak’ discipline because it integrates and yet depends upon many areas of knowledge. This was made explicit as early as the first century CE, when Vitruvius (1914, p. 5) wrote in The Ten Books on Architecture that “the architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning … knowledge [which] is the
child of practice and of theory”. He lists drawing, geometry, history, philosophy, music, medicine, law, astronomy and astrology. Architects and students of architecture still engage with some of these, as well as more recently formed areas of study such as social science, geography, biology, linguistic theory and digital media. 
 
Architecture has been disciplined, codified, and bounded in various ways since Vitruvius – socially, economically, politically, institutionally and professionally. Yet, despite its multi-faceted nature, it is defined by separation from other areas of expertise, both practical and academic. Each brings its own set of attitudes — has its own culture — so that to embrace more than one involves a willed effort of connection and understanding, and constant negotiations over common or uncommon definitions, scope, methods, practices, responsibilities. 
 
Through this call, we seek papers that investigate the discipline and disciplining of architecture as effected in contemporary research, teaching, and practice. We call for explorations of the way in which architecture contributes to disciplining and the disciplines of culture. We invite rigorously speculative, purposively imaginative, visually and verbally stimulating contributions that explore disciplinarity through their own mode of argument – that combine text with sound or image (moving, cartoon or still), or that use text or image in investigative ways. We want to explore what an academic paper might be. To achieve our aim of expanding interdisciplinary knowledge of architecture and culture, we invite contributions from historians of architecture and culture, geographers, anthropologists and other social scientists, architects and urban designers, from film-makers, animators and other artists, thinkers and writers of all kinds. 
 
Papers might address the following themes and questions:
 
- Integrity and unity
Borrowing from Michel Foucault’s notion of epistemological unities in Archaeology of Knowledge, what kind of unity or unities does architecture form, as a discipline? And by what or by whom is this unity defined? What constitute ‘discursive formations’ in architecture? Does the practice of architecture assume the same unities as its academic pursuit? Does culture at large perceive unities in architecture? Does a discipline that unites, or integrates multiple types of knowledge have its own integrity? Can the discipline be disaggregated into specialists and experts? 
 
- Discipline, code, boundary 
 
What are the critical edges, boundaries or essential codes of the disciplineof architecture? How fixed, stretched, or porous are they and how have disputes over codes and boundaries shaped and transformed disciplinary understandings and practices? What constraints are necessary and/or productive? Does disciplinary coding and bounding inevitably engender shadow practices that are secret, illegal, illicit, dissidence? In both academia and practice, architecture is policed by its institutions so as to ensure codes of disciplinary practice are adhered to, and disciplining can take place if boundaries are breached; what does it mean to teach/research/practice within the coded and regulated academic and professional institutions of architecture and how are they policed? Who disciplines who and how? In what ways do teachers and practitioners encourage and facilitate ‘undisciplinary’ activity in architectural production? 
 
- Multi/Inter/trans-disciplinarity
 
What might architectural research, teaching and design learn from the current increase in interest in creative trans-, multi- and interdisciplinary methodologies to contest boundaries of disciplines? Is blundering through other disciplines part of architecture’s strength, or merely dilettantism? What are critical interdependencies and dependencies of this ‘weak’ discipline? What new uncommon disciplines or media has architects/architectural researchers and teachers embraced in practice/research/teaching and to what end? Can trans-, multi- and interdisciplinary practice (theoretical or practical) positively expand the discipline of architecture and if so, how? When does a discipline dissolve or become unrecognisable as a palimpsest of many? 
 
- Experiential
 
Is architecture viewed or experienced in the same way by academics, the profession, other disciplines and users at large? If not, in what way and to what end are its boundaries established by different groups? Do non-architects suffer from amnesia about most architecture they experience daily?
 
The submission deadline is 2nd April 2013, 5pm UK time. Accepted articles will be published in November 2013.
 
For ‘Author Guidelines’, please see
http://www.bergpublishers.com/BergJournals/ArchitectureandCulture/AuthorGuidelines/tabid/15275/Default.aspx

 

Call for papers. 'On the Spatial Epistemiology of Politics' 

Call for papers. ‘On the Spatial Epistemology of Politics’
Deadline: 8 April, 2013
 
‘On the Spatial Epistemology of Politics, or How We Know Politics Through Space: Essays for Design Studies’ is a forthcoming edited book that explores how spaces are political and how politics is spatial. Co-edited by Harvard PhD candidates Delia Wendel and Fallon Samuels Aidoo, the book is funded in part by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
 
We are soliciting original research from a wide range of disciplinary and geographical concentrations to explore how spatial practices and forms produce knowledge of political conflict and consensus. The full Call for Papers and additional information on the book can be found at www.spaceandpolitics.org
 
Thanks to recent press (see: http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/news/spatial-politics-delia-wendel-and-fallon-samuels-aidoo-in.html) we received new interest from potential contributors to 'On the Spatial Epistemology of Politics,' and we are extending our Call for Papers deadline to April 08, 2013.


Call for papers. Sustainable Resources for Sustainable Cities Symposium (UCL only)

November 2013
Deadline for submissions: 19 April 2013


In 2013 the BHP Billiton Sustainable Communities/UCL Grand Challenge Symposium Series will focus on the Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities, with a particular interest in the resource dimension of the many challenges growing urban centres face.

We now invite applications from academic colleagues and research students interested in presenting their research at the symposium.

Currently open to UCL STAFF/STUDENTS ONLY

Deadline: April 19, 2013


Call for proposals. Materials at the Centre: An Institute of Making research workshop

Friday 19 April
Deadline for proposals: 22 March

Are you involved or interested in interdisciplinary research to do with materials or making?  

This is your chance to demonstrate what's wonderful about what and how you research, with access to the instruments and equipment in our brand new MakeSpace and the collection of wondrous substances in our Materials Library, gathered from markets, laboratories and sheds all over the world.

Materials at the Centre is an Institute of Making workshop that brings together researchers from across the arts and sciences to interrogate the relationship between the cognitive and the material in research. This discussion proposes that materials, the act of making and processes of experimentation can fire the imagination in ways that complement language and make possible new ways of thinking.

Come and talk to us about how stuff inspires you. How do you use the objects around you to think, or are you purely cerebral?

We are looking for individuals or groups of researchers to take part in this materials and making led discussion. Surprise us with the format - a curated collection, demonstrations, or haikus are positively encouraged.

For more information about how to get involved or to contact us, see our website: www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/events/detail/materials-at-the-centre
 

Summer school: Urban Conflict and Contact Zones

Date: 17 June – 28 June 2013
Venue: Humboldt University, Berlin
Application deadline: 1 June 2013

 
Multiplicities is running a Summer School with Humboldt University Berlin and the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies. Course level: Masters, PhD.
 
The overall aim of the summer school is to develop an analytical and a problem-solving perspective on urban conflict and contact zones. In an interdisciplinary approach we are capitalizing from urban studies and design studies methodologies and theories.
 
The everyday course meeting and course work will take place in a real live conflict zone within the changing ‘Brunnenviertel’ neighbourhood in Wedding. The area is confronted with complex urban changes. With a large group of deprived inhabitants with often migrant backgrounds, it is at the same time a potentially upcoming place for new creative entrepreneurs.
 
The course will be hosted directly in this neighborhood at the Supermarkt, in the heart of the Brunnenviertel, just behind the border that divides Berlin-Mitte from Wedding. The Team of the Supermarkt has created a new space for events, workshops and the trade with ideas & services. Since February 2012, the Supermarkt is the new creative resource center for northern Brunnenstraße and beyond.
 
Programme: http://bit.ly/11LAVva
Application: https://huwisu.de/applications/start/?next=&course=64
Course details: http://huwisu.de/courses/details/64/
Multiplicities: http://www.multiplicities.de
Supermarkt: http://www.supermarkt-berlin.net
                                   
Contact: lange@multiplicities.de or bergmann@multiplicities.de or call
+49-030-44037732
 

Urban Photography Summer School 2013

Goldsmiths, University of London
19-31 August 2013
Application deadline 10 June

Designed for photographers, artists and urbanists whose work address notions of urban space and culture, the international Summer School provides a highly intensive two-week practical and theoretical training in key aspects of urban visual practice. The course aims to offer participants a wide range of relevant skills resulting in the production of a photography portfolio drawn from London’s urban environments, combined with a collective final exhibition.

The programme has been developed in collaboration with Urban Encounters (Tate Britain), the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Photofusion and the International Association of Visual Urbanists (iAVU). The course is taught by experienced tutors from Goldsmith’s top-ranked Sociology Department and the international MA in Photography and Urban Cultures. The programme draws on the advanced theoretical, research and practical image-making specialisms of key practitioners in the field.

Summer School tutors include: Paul Halliday (MA in Photography and Urban Cultures Course Leader),Beatriz Véliz Argueta (Coordinator/Goldsmiths), Les Back (Goldsmiths), Caroline Knowles (CUCR Director), Mandy Lee Jandrell (Southampton Solent University/Goldsmiths), Peter Coles (Oxford/ Goldsmiths), Alex Rhys-Taylor (Goldsmiths), Manuel Vazquez (Goldsmiths),  Laura Cuch (Goldsmiths) and Jasmine Cheng (Goldsmiths).

The programme will explore how the practice of urban image making informs the development of a reflexive and critical research perspective and will include assignments and guided fieldtrips focusing on (1) urban landscapes, (2)  street-based photography and (3) material objects.

The Summer School will take place from 19 – 31 August 2013. Application deadline is June 10.

For more information: www.gold.ac.uk/cucr/summer-school/  
 

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