BOZAR / Centre for Fine Arts Rue Ravenstein 23 1000 Bruxelles Belgien
Climate change causes an important rise in the sea level, which is a major threat for coastal areas and small islands all over the globe. Even in urban areas at higher levels and inland, the growing quantities of rainwater in combination with spreading urbanization can also cause a major flood risk for entire city areas, something that is happening more often than before.
The 2nd Edition of the Brussels Urban Landscape Biennial dives into the growing problem of floods in urban areas. How to deal with the evacuation of rainwater in an integrated manner? Can landscape architecture generate answers for these complex challenges? What are the limits of the current way of addressing this question? Through workshops, research by design, an exhibition, a colloquium, curated walks and lectures, the two-month BULB festival tries to sensitize the broader public to the importance of water in the urban landscape. Instead of considering water as a threat, it will be approached as a vital and structuring element in the urban landscape.
At the main BULB exhibition at the Centre for Fine Arts, the Bureau Bas Smets, JNC International and Taktyk will be presenting their vision.
Workshop leader: Architecture Workroom Brussels.
Marco Ranzato, the editor of "Water vs. Urban Scape—Exploring Integrated Water-Urban Arrangements” will give a lecture during the Biennial
Librairie Volume 47, rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth 75003 Paris
Thresholds are an–often overlooked–anthropological constant found in every era and every culture. From the spatial understanding of Greek antiquity to the establishment of the private sphere in the 18th century and the transparency of modern architecture, the threshold has always been a central architectural element. Like a visual symbol of a boundary or a transition, thresholds divide spaces, but are also a connecting element, opening up ways through and across, which have a subtle influence on one’s own perception of space. It is only in recent decades that thresholds have lost significance as part of our everyday experience with architecture. What remains is a growing emptiness between people and the spaces in which they live. Sensual City Studio not only provides an inspiring overview of this important architectural stylistic feature from all eras and cultures, but also shows in particular: thresholds can and must be rethought and rebuilt. In this respect, this book is a plea for the renaissance of the threshold and therefore also a manifesto for a human architecture.
* Sensual City Studio, founded by Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti, in association with the philosopher Philippe Simay and the architect Estefania Mompean, is a laboratory of ideas, creation and urban foresight. It brings together a network of professionals from the worlds of art, architecture and urban planning, as well as the social sciences. Working at different levels, from design to urban planning, the studio analyses changes in architecture and large modern cities in order to predict the effect that they will have. Sensual City Studio seeks to develop a sensitive, humanist approach to the city, combining sustainable development and new technologies in a quest for innovation and urban delight. The result is a preliminary analysis, procedure and stance which inform the architectural design process.
CIVA Rue de l'Ermitage 55 Kluisstraat 1050 Bruxelles
Urban river floods, inundations, water shortage, dirty water, water pollution, or drowning are nothing new for our urban environments. But is there any other paradigm to follow but going along with the assumption water vs. urban? How can the challenge be met to give more room for water while enhancing the spatial quality of our urban landscapes?
As early as the nineties, the concept of Integrated Water Management has gained momentum in urban design research and practice. Water vs. Urban Scape presents promising new approaches to integrate water in the urban landscape through design-based experiences drawn up for a range of specific socio-spatial urban landscapes across the world such as the diffuse urbanisation in the Northeast of Italy and in Flanders, the booming cities of Shanghai and Istanbul or the expanding Oslo, the informal urbanisation of Kigali and the suburbanisation of Perth. In a second part, four visual essays display possible scenarios of integrated water-urban arrangement in the Brussels Capital Region. With this, Water vs. Urban Scape provides plenty of inspiration for tackling one of the major issues of Urban Design in the urban age.
During the book launch there will of course be time for questions and room for discussion with some of the authors and the editor.
Talk with Andrea Bortolotti, Andrea Aragone, Pauline Cabrit, Catalina Dobre, Bianca Fanta, Roberto Genna, Gery Leloutre & Maëlle Thueaux.
Through speeches, articles and interviews, this book highlights some of the more significant considerations that have run parallel with Vassilis Sgoutas’ own steps in architecture. It also includes a Random Diary, where the focus is not on what was said or written, but rather on experiences and thoughts that have emanated from events related to architects and to architecture. Although this book is a personal book, it is also a mirror of the parallel roads of many architects. Through its pages, glimpses can be caught of the more recent history of the UIA, a unique professional organisation that brings together the architects of the world, in pursuit of common ideals and targets. Memory is our wealth. Having on record these texts and events helps rediscover how our priorities have changed. And how they differ across the globe. In reading between the lines one will be able to gauge what has been the legacy of actions, or inaction, and where architects, as individuals and as a profession, have had a positive influence on the advancement of causes. So it is a little more than mere history, it is also an awakening call.
Introduction speech by
Fani Vavili, Αrchitect, Professor in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, President of the Hellenic Department of the International Association of Architects (UIA)
Speakers
Nikos Vatopoulos, Journalist – Writer
Pavlos Lefas, Architect, Professor in University of Patras
Yannis Michael, Architect – Planner
Dimitris Filippidis, Architect, Professor Emeritus in Archaeology at the national Technical University of Athens
A discussion will follow, with audience participation.
The upcoming New Town Lab in Sabaudia will take place from the afternoon of May 16th until the evening of May 17th and will focus on public spaces as places of integration. (How) can public space play a role in accommodating the needs and desires of the multifaceted and diverse population of Sabaudia? Four or five locations in the city will be explored by the students from the University of Padua. They have already begun studying how collective spaces – piazzas, parks, markets and public transport hubs – can contribute to making our contemporary cities more inclusive and socially and culturally cohesive. One of the case studies will be the Bella Farnia estate, located 7km outside the centre. This coastal estate consists mainly of holiday houses, small villas and residences which today are partially used to accommodate the migrant community. Two distinct groups co-exist: the Italian middle class and a Punjab (Indian) Sikh community that works in the municipal territory’s many greenhouses.
Japan Architects Association JIA Hall 1F Building Club 2-3-18 Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo, Japan
Since opening its shores to the outside world in the late nineteenth century, Japan has sustained an active relationship of cultural exchange with the West. Japan's grand resort hotels, built during the era between the Restoration of the Meiji Emperor in 1868 until the onset of war in the late 1930s, are some of the most engaging and enduring examples of this cross-fertilization. Eager to champion both its national identity and its status as a modern nation, Japanese hoteliers looked to adapt Western hotel standards to the aesthetic and cultural demands of the Japanese archipelago. With their buildings they provided glamorous settings in which worldly Japanese and curious Westerners could mingle. The grand hotels are romantic hybrids of Beaux Arts grandeur and Japanese temple and shrine motifs, and offer the pleasures of both architectural traditions. They straddle two worlds, being both familiar and exotic to visitors and locals alike. Welcoming the West focuses on the history and design of six of these grand resort hotels: the Nara, the Fujiya, the Nikko Kanaya, the Fuji View, the Biwako, and the Gamagori. Built at a pivotal moment when Japan’s architectural traditions were latent with change and possibility, they are a manifestation of an unprecedented exchange of ideas wrought in timber, stone, and concrete.
All over the world, cities are facing challenges. How can we make a success out of the endeavour to develop and keep the urban space as a common space for society, even during times when it is capitalized and privatized? What is the part played by art, culture, architecture, self-organized action and activism?
During the past few years, artists, architects, philosophers, urbanists and activists from seven different European cities tackled these aspects within the project ACTOPOLIS | The Art of Action. The exhibition sets forth examples of projects from Ankara/Mardin, Athens, Bucharest, Belgrade, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb. The materials coming from the over 45 individual projects make up a substantial portfolio of possibilities for transforming and improving the cities we live in. The exhibition (design NODE, Berlin – Oslo and SSW Architekten, Berlin) offers inspiration and concrete impulses to act.
With the exhibition traveling to Izmir a new city joined the ACTOPOLIS network! Apart from the exhibition at the Chamber of Architects, the "Flying Carpet Tour" programme is collecting stories in public spaces throughout Izmir. More information and upates about the exhibition here. http://blog.goethe.de/actopolis | www.goethe.de Exhibition: November 15th - November 28th 2017 Opening: November 15th
For now, Thessaloniki will be the last stop of the Actopolis touring exhibition. Curator Lydia Chatziiakovou was putting together a list of artists and projects that will be showcased together with the touring Actopolis exhibits in Thessaloniki's Old Slaughterhouse. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Municipality of Thessaloniki. Artists and projects exclusively presented in the Actopolis Thessaloniki exhibition: Efthimis Theou / Elektra Aggelopoulou, Eric Ellingsen, Swaantje Güntzel / Jan Phillip Scheibe, Greece Communitere, Andrea Iten, Practise(in)Cognition, Lynn Peemoeller. www.goethe.de | www.facebook.com/events Exhibition: November 24th - December 6th 2017 Opening: November 24th 2017, 7pm
Within the „Region l Architecture for All Work Group meeting” in Dublin | 13th and 14th November 2017
Vassilis Sgoutas, past president of UIA, chairperson of the final jury for the Friendly and Inclusive Spaces Awards, and the person who as UIA president in 1999 established both the Architecture for All and the Architecture and Children Work Programmes will engage “in conversation” with Irish architect and journalist Shane O’Toole about his book „A Journey with the Architects of the World”, the many topics it covers and the role of UIA, hopefully culminating in a lively dialogue with Irish architects and members of AfA WP.
Aalborg University Auditorium Fredrik Bajers Vej 5 Postboks 159 9100 Aalborg Denmark
From September 21-23. the DIST center at Aalborg University in Copenhagen will host a conference on experimental urban development in cooperation with GivRum. The purpose of the conference is to gather researchers, planners, developers and activists to a three day exploration of how we can create more liveable and sustainable cities through experimental urban development. The conference is framed by the international City Link festival, which is this year happening in the Sydhavn neighborhood in Copenhagen. The festival theme is “building bridges” and works with how to sustain and develop communities in the area.
September 21: Activists and researchers present and reflect on protest actions, art projects and cultural spaces from Hamburg that are connected to the local right to the city network (Recht auf Stadt). Together they will illustrate that it’s often artists, activists and cultural producers who open up laboratories in the city and carry out experiments in public space for co-creation, self-organization and alternative community life.
This way they contribute to the liveability of cities, foster local democracy and reinforce urban resilience. This part of the conference is organized and presented by Michael Ziehl, Carsten Rabe and Till Haupt, editors of “City Linkage: Art and Culture Fostering Urban Futures”. The publication bases on events, lectures and exhibitions of the City Link Festival 2014 in Hamburg.
Schedule of the Panel: “City Linkage” introduction and presentation by Michael Ziehl, Carsten Rabe and Till Haupt – 18 min. “How to Claim the Right to the City” talk by Till Haupt – 18 min. “Producing Urban Citizenship in Arrivati Park” talk by Niels Boeing – 18 min. “A Space of Performing Citizenship: The Gängeviertel” talk by Michael Ziehl – 18 min. “Unclosing Spaces by Means of a Festival: Hallo Festspiele” talk by Dorothee Halbrock, Julia Lerch-Zajączkowska – 10 min. open panel discussion, special guest: Oleg Koefoed (Growing Pathways, Copenhagen) – 38 min.
Arc en rêve centre d'architecture Entrepôt 7 rue Ferrère 33000 Bordeaux France
From 14 September 2017 to 14 January 2018, arc en rêve centre d’architecture presents the exhibition “infidélités créatives TOPOTEK 1” devoted to the Berlin-based landscape design studio TOPOTEK 1. The exhibition takes place in the stimulating context of a contemporary urban society that is increasingly eager to embrace nature. In the framework of the numerous projects they have carried out in Europe and Asia, the TOPOTEK 1 landscape designers invariably draw their inspiration from local cultural and historic references. They are also interested in other aspects linked to global urban diversity, which they include in their creations.
Thursday 14 September 2017: 6.30 pm presentation, 8:30 pm inauguration
