Some fifteen years have passed since Rem Koolhaas claimed that "If there is to be a 'new urbanism' it will not be based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence but [on] the staging of uncertainty." "To survive," Koolhaas continued, "urbanism will have to imagine a new newness."

In the intervening decade and a half while the collective weight of the world's largest cities has grown by almost 150 million people, urban designers and architects have remarkably ceded the planning and invention of cities to panoply of other interest groups and professionals. When called to action, many of the urbanists and architects who remain committed to the arena of city making now retreat to historical models of urbanization in favor of innovation or novelty.

Organized by SCI-Arc's Future Initiatives program, the Other New Urbanisms Symposium will explore the possibilities and pitfalls of innovative and contemporary approaches to city making. As the second in a series of planned SCI-Arc Future Initiatives (SCIFI) symposia, this event aims to broaden the discussion of the "new" in urbanism, with the hope of discussing a range of contemporary approaches to urban design that integrate new attitudes towards cultural production, aesthetics, and ecology.

The event is free and open to the public. No reservations are required. The symposium will also be broadcast live at www.sciarc.edu/live

Presentations

David Fletcher
Principal, Fletcher Studio Landscape Architecture + Urban Design
Faculty at California College of the Arts

"The expansive embankments that cradle many urban freeways represent one of the greatest untapped spatial fragments of the contemporary built environment. This conceptual proposal explores the radical transformation and reuse of these spaces, and others like them, to create vibrant live-work agricultural villages which operate in metabolic symbiosis with productive urban landscapes. The Terrabank Village would provide a structural alternative to the missions and homeless shelters in downtown LA-transforming a cycle of passive dependency into a cycle of active empowerment. In this system, operative landscapes and programmatically flexible live-work units function to metabolize contaminated water, organic waste, industrial excess, and other recyclable materials from the surrounding city while generating food, shelter, green jobs, and sustainable revenue. As a Terrabank grows more productive and dense over time, its fate rests on its ability to establish strong cultural and economic ties to its host community by providing inclusive and valuable amenities, public spaces, and economic opportunities."

Andrew Zago
Principal, Zago Architecture
Faculty and Visual Studies Coordinator, SCI-Arc

Andrew Zago formed Zago Architecture in 1992. He worked in Los Angeles and New York, where he was the founding director of the master's program in architecture at the City University of New York. Aside from his architectural projects, he also creates autonomous studies, mostly in the form of drawings and assemblages. While still completing buildings, he is currently experimenting with film and digital processing to explore urban and spatial analysis within the context of Detroit, his native city.

Respondents

Orhan Ayyüce
Architect, senior editor and architecture critic for Archinect, Los Angeles
Columnist for Arkitera, Istanbul
Born in Izmir, Turkey. Lives and works in Los Angeles. Graduate of Sci Arc, 1981.

The articles, reviews and interviews by Orhan Ayyüce are regularly published in many leading architecture websites, magazines, newspapers and design blogs throughout the world and translated to different languages. Along with his writing and architectural practice, he is a part time faculty at Cal-Poly Pomona architecture department and regularly interacts with students as a guest critic at local architecture schools.

Sylvia Lavin
Chair, Ph.D. in Architecture Program, UCLA
Professor of Architectural History and Theory, UCLA

A Professor and Director of Critical Studies and MA/PhD programs at UCLA, Lavin has served as visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and elsewhere. Lavin's next books The Flash in the Pan and Other Forms of Architectural Contemporaneity and Kissing Architecture are forthcoming. With Hi-C, a design/research collaborative she founded at UCLA, Lavin is currently curating two exhibitions: Craig Hodgetts, Playmaker - which opened at ACE Galleries, Los Angeles in October; and Take Note which opens at the CCA, Montreal in February 2010.

Moderators
David Bergman
SCIFI Coordinator
Principal, MR+E

Peter Zellner
SCIFI Coordinator
Principal, ZELLNERPLUS