In the last several years, a crisis of capitalist development has redefined our understanding of cities in terms of international policy making, political constituencies and individual and collective political expressions in the urban realm. Inter Unit 8 has been experimenting with possible new scenarios for this political readjustment at a global scale, departing from its most basic expressions in the city. As a result, students have constructed innovative political arguments by experimenting with the relationship between everyday material activities–such as waiting for a bus, dancing, chatting in the streets, or wheeling and dealing in the city squares–and a particular material organization. In these common everyday practices, students have found the materials from which to reconstruct the political experience in the city. Manifested in public and constructed as a physical material expression, these everyday practices acquire a political value — understanding the political as what Hannah Arendt described as action in public — and redefine new models of the interaction between the individual and the collective in the public arena.

8.11.09

7th Seminar

Conflict Cities Research Cluster in Cambridge - Jerusalem
Maximilian Gwiazda is employed as a post-doctoral researcher on the ESRC-funded ‘Conflict in Cities and the Contested State’ project (www.conflictincities.org). He completed his PhD in the History and Philosophy of Architecture at Cambridge in 2007. His current research focuses on Jerusalem and relates to the visual analysis of the interplay of heritage stewardship, nationalism and urban design in the politics of planning in East Jerusalem. Gwiazda is a founding member and former president of “Architecture Sans Frontières – Cambridge”, an international network of academics, practitioners and public agencies dedicated to the social dimensions of urban development. Gwiazda is an Academic Associate of Pembroke College and acting Director of Studies at Selwyn and Wolfson colleges (2008-2009).
http://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/conflictincities/


Seminar will be held on Friday 13th in Open Room 3 @3.30pm , 36 Bedford Square building.

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Design and research work of Intermediate Unit 8 Architectural Association School of Architecture London UK