THE PRESTON H. THOMAS MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM 2012
DESIGN TACTICS AND THE INFORMALIZED CITY
Informality, which was first categorized and described in the 1970s, is now pervasive — across cities, in the places we live, work, and move through the everyday. For many, the informal is no longer a discrete sector appended to the workings of the "formal" city, but an integral effect of the structuring of cities and landscapes by contemporary economic, political, and technological change. Self-built architectures and urban agglomerations, ambivalent landscapes, nomadic and temporal spatial manifestations of informalization are situationally specific, but globally ubiquitous. Design Tactics and the Informalized City brings a discussion of this reality to disciplines that work on the city in material and spatial terms: architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, engineering, media and product design. Charged with shaping and managing living environments, usually on behalf of instituted powers, these disciplines confront significant questions in encountering the informalized city. Working practices and ways of representing urban phenomena, the appropriate medium and matter of design, even conceptions of agency, constituency and purpose, all come to the fore as matters for critical and creative inquiry. The conference brings together international practitioners from diverse design fields to explore these questions through discussions of recent, compelling work.
CONFERENCE COORDINATORS
Lily Chi, Associate Professor
Department of Architecture, Cornell University
Jeremy Foster, Assistant Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University
Neema Kudva, Associate Professor
Department of City & Regional Planning, Cornell University
Caroline O'Donnell, Richard Meier Assistant Professor
Department of Architecture, Cornell University
No registration fee | Please RSVP at [email protected]
More info at http://aap.cornell.edu/events/informalized-city/index.cfm
FRIDAY APRIL 13
4:30 p.m Welcome and registration
5:00 p.m. Introductions
5:30 p.m. KEYNOTE
Alfredo Brillembourg | Urban-Think Tank, ETH
Last Round Urban Ecology
6:15 p.m. KEYNOTE
Teddy Cruz | Estudio Teddy Cruz, University of California – San Diego
Creative Acts of Citizenship: The Informal as Practice
7:00 p.m. Discussion
7:30 p.m. RECEPTION -- Milstein dome
SATURDAY APRIL 14
8:30 a.m. Registration and coffee
8:45 a.m. Introductions
SESSION 1: VISIBILITY
Moderated by Caroline O’Donnell, Richard Meier Assistant Professor of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Cornell University
--
What potential material or programmatic logic of the existing city is encountered/constructed through the project? How are “problems” or “opportunities” defined, identified, mapped? What methods of observation, analysis, representation, and definition/action were challenged? How must the designer’s traditional tools of recognition, analysis, and understanding change, dilate or adapt?
9:00 a.m.
Maurice Mitchell | London Metropolitan University Dept. of Architecture and Spatial Design
Architect as Detective, Narrator and Craftsperson
Sabine Müller | SMAQ
Mini and Many – Drawing Actions that Shape the City
Sarah Williams | Columbia University Spatial Information Design Lab
Data Sequence: Communicating Science, Society, and Policy of Places by Exposing the Invisible
10:15 a.m. Discussion
11:00 a.m. BREAK
SESSION 2: TACTICS
Moderated by Milton S.F. Curry, Associate Dean & Associate Professor of Architecture
University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
--
How is the “site” of work defined? What broader systemic relations does the project/prototype aim at? How are existing organizations or structures appropriated, redirected, reconfigured? How does the project (re)define the means and methods of design allowing for the assemblage of individual and/or institutional actors involved?
11:15 a.m.
Priti Parikh | Development Vision 2o2o, Imperial College Business School
Slum Networking
Richard Dobson | Asiye eTafuleni, Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project
Pragmatism in Practice
Marjetica Potrč | University of Fine Arts Hamburg
A Dry Toilet in Caracas and a Community Garden in Amsterdam: A Vision of the Future City and the Artist as Mediator
12:30 p.m. Discussion
1:00 p.m. LUNCH BREAK
2:00 p.m. KEYNOTE
Neil Gershenfeld | MIT Center for Bits and Atoms
Bits and Atoms
3:00 p.m. BREAK
SESSION 3: TEMPORALITIES
Moderated by Jeremy Foster, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University
--
How does the design work define its role and operation with respect to the dynamics of the contemporary city? How does the project address or accommodate urban contingencies, practices, and processes, both known and unknowable? How does it provide a framework or vehicle for adaptation, transformation, mutation, appropriation? How has it been transformed by its context, or developed additional layers of meaning and functionality?
3:15 p.m.
Rupali Gupte | Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture
Provisional Practice
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto | Atelier Bow Wow, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Spatial Practice of Public Space
Alessandro Petti | Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, Al-Quds/Bard College Jerusalem
The Camp as Political Project
4:30 p.m. Discussion
5:15 p.m. BREAK
5:30 p.m. KEYNOTE + SUMMARY
Rahul Mehrotra | Harvard GSD Department of Urban Planning and Design
Kinetic City
Moderated by Neema Kudva, Associate Professor, Department of City & Regional Planning, Cornell University
