Keynote 1

Eve Blau (Architecture, Harvard)
"Research Between Theory & Practice: Case Study 'Project Zagreb'"

In the last twenty years, the rate and intensity of change in cities across the globe – particularly in the developing world – has radically challenged not only normative planning methods, but traditional concepts of urbanism, and our ability to understand the dynamics of change itself. In recent years, particularly in postcommunist Europe, a discourse of “transitology” has emerged, which theorizes the improvised formations of “transitional” cities in terms of a new culture of urban action and even of self-organizing systems. But, these formations, like the condition of postcommunism itself, are proving to be ephemeral. If we want to understand the dynamics and modalities of contemporary urban change and their implications for spatial practices – architecture in particular – we need to develop new techniques for analyzing and representing conditions that are both multiple and unstable, and contingent on equally unstable and multivariate factors; we need, in other words, to (re)ground theory and practice in research.

Thursday, March 12th 4:15-6:00pm
Faculty of Architecture, Auditorium, Rm103 (!)

Discussant: Robert Levit (Architecture, UofT)
Fair-trade coffee and cookies provided by The Local Café