The conference, subtitled Conditions and projections, hopes to propel a discussion about the unfulfilled potential of the practice of Urban Design and the role it can play in mediating the different disciplines and forces that eventually mould the built environment in our cities, suburbs and peri-urban conditions —the larger landscape that comprises the objects of human interventions of various kinds.

Participants in the conference will address 6 specific aspects relevant to contemporary discourse in Urban Design:

• Land/form or the re-consideration of architecture’s traditional relationship to the ground, city and landscape, no longer occupying a site but instead, constructing and transforming the site itself.
• Micro-Urbanisms or how in the context of crisis and uncertainty, local, networked, and even intangible interventions can have a direct impact on urban life.
• Applied Research or the instrumental use of teaching and academia’s theories, methods and techniques for the purpose of real transformation of the urban realm.
• Regulatory Practices that actively engage design through planning and policy making to propose more comprehensive scenarios to the current physical transformations of the built environment.
• Strategic Upgrading, or the idea of large-scale transformation precipitated by strategic changes in the urban microcosm.
• Authorship and Collaboration, or the exploration of current thinking about the role of collective authorship and collaboration within the design process in response to diverse working scales, emerging technologies and degrees of complexity

You can learn more about the conference at the official website.

dreamhamar is focusing on green an environmental matters these days and that includes Hamar Experience 14. Don’t be surprised at the title, it is one of the many possible and impossible ideas we get for the future Stortorget. What do you think? Are mangos good for the environment?

Send us your ideas and questions to dreamhamar@gmail.com and Belinda will answer them on Hamar Experience 14.

Belinda Tato will talk about the latest activities going on in Stortorget, Hamar, Norway. For instance, on Saturday 22nd there will be an event called greenhamar. From 13h, Naturvernforbundet, Natur og Ungdom, and Hexeringen mushroom gathering group will be offering free home-made local mushroom hot soup, smoothies at a new looking Stortorget square, courtesy of VEA School (Statens fagskole for gartnere og blomsterdekoratører). The weather forecast is 10ºC and a bit cloudy but there is not such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes, as a Hamar neighbour said once.

Join us at our Livestream channel on Monday at 18:00h to have fun with Hamar Experience from your computer!

Meanwhile, you can have a look at the video of the latest session:

In this session Belinda Tato will talk about last week ACTIVITIES WORKSHOP. If you have seen the pictures, then you already know that the participants had a great time and really enjoyed themselves. As Creative Guest Elger Blitz said, playing is good for everybody, regardless of their age.

We also have a guest: ENVIRONMENT Community Activator Romy Ortiz, a human geographer from the University of Bergen. She works in the Centre for urban ecology, on environmentally friendly urban development, urban meeting places, and integration issues. This is what she writes about her role:

“Come to the workshop, so we can design a square that is human and environmentally friendly!”

If you don’t feel like surfing dreamhamar.org, this is your best shot at getting the latest news on what’s going on in Stortorget Square!

See you today, on Monday 17th, at 18:00 on dreamhamar.org!

This evening the energy of the young and the inspiration of the muses make a somewhat different Hamar Experience, but don’t be afraid, for it is what happens when you have so many things to talk about with such nice guests.

Kathrine Berg is a lovely woman and artist who is working with the 1,300 kids from the Cultural Rucksack Project. By the way, the Cultural Rucksack will finish this week and we are looking forward to seeing the results.

Inger Lise works on a different project about art and youth. Whatever she has to say, it is going to be interesting. And yes, we are letting her tell you the details about the project. We think it’s more interesting that way.

And there is more, because next week ACTIVITIES workshops begin and you are going to get a preview on what is going to happen there – What? You haven’t registered yet? It is free, it is fun and you’ll meet interesting people while talking about Hamar. And we might just invite you to coffee and cake, too.

There will also be a surprise for the technology oriented, so don’t forget your smart phone or your tablet pc.

Let the muses and the younsters inspire you this evening at 18:00h on Hamar Experience 12.

Last week the TECHNOLOGY workshop took place and Hamar response was even better than expected. We also had a workshop with students from Bergen School of Architecture, who resulted in a free lunch on Stortorget – with a cow as special guest!

On today’s Hamar Experience 11 Belinda Tato will share pictures and anecdotes from the workshop and the free lunch.

And of course, because Hamar is the star of dreamhamar, Belinda will share the spotlight with a citizen who participated on TECHNOLOGY workshop – Morten Fridstrøm. He will tell us about his experience and if the workshop was everything he expected!

Unfortunately, we will not be able to bring the cow to Hamar Experience. Nevertheless, you’ve got a date with the progress of dreamhamar on Monday, at 18:00h on http://www.dreamhamar.org/category/hamar-experience/

See you this evening!

Ecosistema urbano (@ecosistema) has been invited to lead a workshop at the School of architecture of Nancy – France.
Jose Luis Vallejo (@jlvmateo) will be empowering a group of students to experience the urban complexity of Nancy and will try to introduce them into bottom-up participatory processes.
Other professionals invited together with Jose Luis Vallejo are:
Saija HOLLMEN, Architect – Finland (www.hollmenreutersandman.com)
Pierre HEBBELINCK, Architect – Belgium (www.pierrehebbelinck.net)
Beniamino SERVINO, Architect – Italy (ec2.it/beniaminoservino )
Tilman LATZ, Landscape architect – Germany (www.latzundpartner.de)

The presentation of results will be during the morning of Friday 24th June 2011 (8.30 – 12.00)

more info: http://www.nancy.archi.fr/

This central event, scheduled for the end of June, will provide an opportunity not only to expose the public to the oeuvre of some of the world’s leading practitioners in their professional prime, but also to question and define the boundaries and characteristics of architectural culture in Israel vis-א-vis other geographies.

Format

The programme is built as a two-day event, in which the first day (June 23) is dedicated to reviews at the department in Jerusalem and the second day (June 24) in the morning hours, will be organized around a public panel in which participants will discuss their works in relation to this year’s theme, “realism”.

List of participants

Shohsei Shigematsu (OMA, New York)

Belinda Tato (Ecosistema Urbano, Madrid)

Henry Urbach (SFMOMA, San Francisco)

Shohei Shigematsu is a partner of The Office for Metropolitan Architecture and is currently director of OMA*AMO in New York. He is currently in charge of Cornell University’s new building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning in Ithaca, NY, a Mixed-use High-rise Building in Jersey City, NJ, and a Residential Tower with CAA (Creative Artist Agency) screening room on 23 East 22nd Street in Manhattan amongst other projects. Shohei Shigematsu was project leader of winning design competitions such as the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the Koning Julianaplein Mixed-use Building in The Hague and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Building. He has been a driving force in conceptual projects such as the Universal Headquarters in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum Extension in New York, the Tokyo vertical Campus, the China National Museum and Prada Epicenters for Shanghai and London.

Belinda Tato (@belindatato) is a founding member of Ecosistema Urbano (@ecosistema) – is an innovative agency focused on the understanding of the city as a complex phenomenon, from a special point of view between architecture, urbanism, engineering and sociology. The team’s field of interest is defined by something they call `creative urban sustainability, from where to react to the present situation of cities through innovation, creativity and particularly action.

Since 2000, their work has been nationally and internationally awarded in more than 30 occasions. In 2006, they were awarded the prize of the Architectural Association and the Environments, Ecology and Sustainability Research Cluster. In 2007 they received the AR AWARD for emerging architecture in London. In 2008 the first prize NEXT GENERATION AWARD from the Arquia Proxima Foundation and in 2009 the Silver Award Europe from the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

Henry Urbach is the Helen Hilton Raiser curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Urbach came to SFMOMA from New York, where he owned and directed Henry Urbach Architecture, a gallery of contemporary art and architecture that he founded in 1997. His past curatorial projects, in addition to more than 50 exhibitions at his gallery, include Latent Space at Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam (2002); 2 x 2 at Apex Art, New York (2004); and Paradise 8 at Exit Art, New York (1999). Henry Urbach Architecture represented and exhibited many important artists and architects, including Aziz + Cucher, Richard Barnes, Marco Brambilla, Stephen Dean, Diller + Scofidio, E. V. Day, Langlands & Bell, An Te Liu, LOT-EK, Le Corbusier, Neal Rock, Lindy Roy, Ezra Stoller, and Lebbeus Woods. Urbach also served on curatorial and advisory panels for Exit Art, Artists Space, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

web: http://www.bezalel.ac.il/en/events/item/?id=1004

Ecosistema Urbano has been invited to lead a workshop (FESTARCH-LAB) at the international architectural event, curated by Stefano Boeri, FESTARCH 2011 (festarch.it) to be held at various locations in the Italian region of Umbria (Terni, Perugia and Assisi) between May 26th and June 5th 2011.

Jose Luis Vallejo (@jlvmateo) and Domenico Di Siena (@urbanohumano) from ecosistema urbano will be guiding a group of 30 young european architects, students, artist and local citizens to experience the complexity of the city.

Weeks ago through this post (COME WITH US TO FESTARCH-LAB 2011 !!!!!!! ), we launched a call for participants and thanks to our blog followers the response has been very succesful. The selected people will be granted with free registration and accomodation.

The workshop will take place in Terni (100km north of Rome), from May 27th to June 1st  2011.
Next Saturday 28th of May 19.30 there will be an open lecture around ecosistema urbano work at CAOS center Terni.
We’ll be glad to meet some of ecosistema urbano blog readers.

See you in Terni!!!!

Next monday (April 18) Saskia Sassen will be in Lisbon for an evening conference on ‘city civic movements in a global world’ at the presentation of the ‘GLOBAL CITY 2.0′ NETWORK (see document below ).

The Portuguese CIDADES PELA RETOMA movement is now challenging partnersworldwide to create a global network called GLOBAL CITY 2.0, an open invitation toindividuals, groups and institutions who wish to think about the role of URBAN CIVICMOVEMENTS and its potential to transform cities and beyond, specially in this hardeconomic times (http://globalcity.blogs.sapo.pt/).

GLOBAL CITY 2.0 is currently developing a map of urban-based blogs and sites- from thescale of streets to neighbourhoods and cities- promoted by citizens or groups that thinkcollaboratively about the future of the places where they live and work. The initiative isdeveloped under the spirit of the ’2011 European Year of Volunteering to promote moreactive citizenship’(http://europa.eu/volunteering/). Following the first gathering ofinformation we have managed to map more than 250 blogs in 15 countries.

‘No economic recovery without cities & citizens’ Civic Movement:
blog: http://noeconomicrecoverywithoutcities.blogs.sapo.pt/
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CidadespelaRetoma

Global City 2.0

TAC Technically Advanced Construction is a new postgraduate course for graduates and professionals established by the Department of Building Environment Science and Technology (BEST), Politecnico di Milano and Co-de-iT. It will run for three months and will allow participants to achieve high levels of knowledge in the design-to-production process through the use of advanced digital tools for design and machines for the creation of physical models.

The entire course, based at the Polytechnic of Milan, will take place through studies, workshops and working periods assisted (during the development, manufacture and test trial) by a team of highly skilled professionals and teachers (from studies and international schools like AA London, ARUP, Buro Happold, Zaha Hadid, Gehry Technologies, SPAN Architects …).

The objective is to design, prototype, and finally test “multi-performative skins” through computational design software. Audits in progress performance of the “skin” will be the main feedback to optimize the final design.

The course will be completed by a series of public lectures held by the same course tutors and other professionals and teachers of international renown.

The course will start on January 17, 2011 and will end on April 15, 2011 (daily attendance).
Registration are open until December 13, 2010.

TUTORS

- Evan Greenberg [AA_London, EmTech] 1st week
- Christina Doumpioti [AA_London, EmTech] 1st week
- Matias del Campo [SPAN Architects] 2nd – 3rd week
- Sandra Manninger [SPAN Architects] 2nd – 3rd week
- Oliver Tessmann [Bollinger + Grohmann] 4th week
- Luis Fraguada [LaN + IaaC Barcelona] 5th -6th week
- Edmondo Occhipinti [Gehry Technologies] 7th – 8th week
- Marco Verde [HYPERBODY TU Delft] - 9th week
- Arnold Walz [designtoproduction] – 10th week
- Luca Dal Cerro [DeCoDe Paris] 11th week
- Valerio Bonora [DeCoDe Paris]11th week
- Giammichele Melis [Buro Happold] 12th week

DIGITAL TOOLS TUTORS

- Alessio Erioli [Università di Bologna, Co-de-iT]
- Andrea Graziano [Co-de-iT]
- Federico Rossi [London Southbank University, bloomlab architects]
- Emanuele Naboni [Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts]

http://www.tac.polimi.it/tutors.html

LIVE LECTURES

- Evan Greenberg [AA_London EmTech]
- Christina Doumpioti[AA_London EmTech]
- Matias del Campo [SPAN Architects]
- Sandra Manninger[SPAN Architects]
- Alessio Erioli [Università di Bologna e Co-de-iT]
- Federico Rossi [London Southbank Univertisy, bloomlab architects]
- Emanuele Naboni [Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts]
- Oliver Tessmann [Bollinger & Grohmann]
- Luis Fraguada [LaN & IaaC Barcelona]
- Filippo Innocenti [Zaha Hadid Architects - Roma]
- Edmondo Occhipinti [Gehry Technologies]
- Cristiano Ceccato [Zaha Hadid Architects]
- Marco Verde [HYPERBODY TU Delft]
- Arnold Walz [designtoproduction]
- Luca dal Cerro [DecoDe]
- Giammichele Melis [Buro Happold]

http://www.tac.polimi.it/events.html

Info & contacts:
http://www.tac.polimi.it
info.tac@polimi.it