Memory and the city
Event details
| Date | 31.05.2017 |
| Hour | 10:30 › 13:00 |
| Speaker | Filippo De Pieri, Politecnico di Torino |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Urbanism as heritage, urbanism as public memory: an ongoing research on La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle
by Filippo De Pieri
(CANCELLED) Alternative modernity: silent departures that contemporary Chinese architecture takes
by Zhang Li
ATTENTION: due to unpredictable political issues, Mr Zhang Li must be in China on the 31st and has to cancel his lecture. The lecture is rescheduled for the next academic semester. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Lecture in the framework of the Institute for Area and Global Studies and the EDAR course on the study of urban memory. The course explores the ways in which memory studies have influenced research and education in the field of architecture and urban studies from WW2 to the present day.
Lectures followed by an aperitif.
_____________________________
Urbanism as heritage, urbanism as public memory: an ongoing research on La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle
by Filippo De Pieri
The recent, joint inscription of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds on the World Heritage List poses some relevant questions to urban historians. The notion of “watchmaking town planning” that was coined for this occasion seems to suggest that a fundamental unity existed between the spatial organisation of these two Swiss cities and the social organisation of their industrial communities. Focusing on an all-too-famous 1835 plan for La Chaux-de-Fonds, I will argue that the scant available sources tell us a different story and that richer, subtler forms of public memory are needed in order to address the challenges faced by these and other post-Unesco cities.
The lecture presents some results of a joint research project on “Memory and the city” currently being carried out by Politecnico di Torino and EPFL.
Filippo De Pieri is Associate Professor of Architectural History, Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
Visiting Professor, Collège des Humanités, EPFL
_____________________________
(CANCELLED) Alternative modernity: silent departures that contemporary Chinese architecture takes
by Zhang Li
In the last 30 years of Chinese urbanisation, three modes of modernity can be witnessed: received modernity, reflective modernity, and alternative modernity. Of the three modes, received modernity is the continuing of the adoption of imported ideas. Reflective modernity tries to give correction to received modernity by rethinking identity. If reflective modernity makes a thoughtful critique on the blindness of received modernity, alternative modernity goes even further. It suspends the domination of megacities, goes back deep into the Chinese rural areas where the first traces of home-grown modernity originated, and tries to explore the scenarios of modernity emerging again from the Chinese countryside. It also argues that rural areas can actually be a new field of both technological and cultural innovations.
Zhang Li is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China.
Visiting Professor, Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino.
Founding Partner and Director of Design at Team Minus, Beijing.
Editor-in-chief, “World Architecture”
_____________________________
by Filippo De Pieri
(CANCELLED) Alternative modernity: silent departures that contemporary Chinese architecture takes
by Zhang Li
ATTENTION: due to unpredictable political issues, Mr Zhang Li must be in China on the 31st and has to cancel his lecture. The lecture is rescheduled for the next academic semester. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Lecture in the framework of the Institute for Area and Global Studies and the EDAR course on the study of urban memory. The course explores the ways in which memory studies have influenced research and education in the field of architecture and urban studies from WW2 to the present day.
Lectures followed by an aperitif.
_____________________________
Urbanism as heritage, urbanism as public memory: an ongoing research on La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle
by Filippo De Pieri
The recent, joint inscription of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds on the World Heritage List poses some relevant questions to urban historians. The notion of “watchmaking town planning” that was coined for this occasion seems to suggest that a fundamental unity existed between the spatial organisation of these two Swiss cities and the social organisation of their industrial communities. Focusing on an all-too-famous 1835 plan for La Chaux-de-Fonds, I will argue that the scant available sources tell us a different story and that richer, subtler forms of public memory are needed in order to address the challenges faced by these and other post-Unesco cities.
The lecture presents some results of a joint research project on “Memory and the city” currently being carried out by Politecnico di Torino and EPFL.
Filippo De Pieri is Associate Professor of Architectural History, Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
Visiting Professor, Collège des Humanités, EPFL
_____________________________
(CANCELLED) Alternative modernity: silent departures that contemporary Chinese architecture takes
by Zhang Li
In the last 30 years of Chinese urbanisation, three modes of modernity can be witnessed: received modernity, reflective modernity, and alternative modernity. Of the three modes, received modernity is the continuing of the adoption of imported ideas. Reflective modernity tries to give correction to received modernity by rethinking identity. If reflective modernity makes a thoughtful critique on the blindness of received modernity, alternative modernity goes even further. It suspends the domination of megacities, goes back deep into the Chinese rural areas where the first traces of home-grown modernity originated, and tries to explore the scenarios of modernity emerging again from the Chinese countryside. It also argues that rural areas can actually be a new field of both technological and cultural innovations.
Zhang Li is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China.
Visiting Professor, Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino.
Founding Partner and Director of Design at Team Minus, Beijing.
Editor-in-chief, “World Architecture”
_____________________________
Practical information
- General public
- Free