For the 6th time the World in Denmark conference presents key note speakers from landscape architecture, urban design and urbanism who reflect upon their most recent transformations of the urban landscape. The theme for the 2010 World in Denmark conference is As Found, which will also be explored in paper sessions and scholars from a wide range of disciplines are invited to submit abstracts.
In landscape architecture and -urbanism, architecture and heritage studies the concept site is increasingly gaining attention. What is found on the site, the uses and the interpretations of it have become determining aspects for the theoretical investigation as well as design and preservation approaches towards the urban landscape. This increased awareness and the new concepts of site leads us to new theory, practice and politics. As Found is the optic through which the conference in Copenhagen, 17th and 18th June 2010 will revisit and reflect upon the everyday urban landscape.
The notion As Found contains a verb and hence opens up the possibility for addressing the situatedness of reading and operating within sites. As a design approach As Found stresses the qualities of what is already there as a positive starting point for interaction between past, present and future states, between the act of preserving and that of transforming.
As Found enables us to perceive post-industrial urban landscapes as dynamic lifeworlds rather than as enclosed objects. Since designers, artists and writers began to study the ordinary environment and everyday culture half a century ago dualisms such as architecture contra sheds; high culture contra the everyday; aesthetic contra anaesthetic have become highly contested. Currently, those hierarchies are contested in other ways, i.e. by the landscape architect Alexandre Chemetoff when including seemingly anaesthetic buildings and roads from the post-war years in his new design, claiming that exactly that which is currently disliked must be handed over to the future and integrated as part of an economization of places-approach The interest in the ordinary and the vernacular appears to be wide ranging and have many different roots and implications for practice. Which sets of values are steering our interest in the ordinary and the vernacular? What is currently being overlooked and suppressed?
As Found is anti-utopian and focuses on the specific rather than the absolute. How can we articulate, discuss and evaluate different approaches when working with the specific?
As Found can be associated with both the idea of identity and that of ecology as part of a renewed site focus. The globalised experience economy is desperately looking for and promoting the spectacular and the exceptional. Can less spectacular identities be developed by interaction with that which is found and which perspectives do this open up for the professions engaged in this field? And further; how does the ecological imperative inform and transform the way we regard the interaction between humans and nature?
Contributions
This conference invites contributions from scholars and practitioners working within landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism, cultural and heritage studies, who have a special interest in how and what we "find" on site, that is how we sense, read, understand, overlook, suppress, transform and interact with existing qualities in the post-industrial urban landscape. The organizers encourage scholars working with a broad variety of different perspectives to submit abstracts related to the arching theme - As Found - and the following three tracks:
T1: Practices
Landscape architecture, urbanism, architecture and historical preservation always changes site conditions. The wide range of approaches and strategies that have been and are developed through these activities will be investigated within this track. Papers are encouraged to reflect on and contribute to the qualification of the transformation of sites done by the author or others.
T2: Theories
The current celebration of As Found-approaches can be understood as part of a wider tendency that appreciates situated, practice-oriented and transdisciplinary knowledge. This track seeks to explore the linkage between site-thinking and theory by discussing it from perspectives of epistemology, philosophy etc.
T3: Politics
Reading and transforming sites implies stressing certain qualities while inevitably excluding or overlooking others. This activity is always based on certain mind-sets, agendas and values that can be contested in the specific situation. Papers in this track are encouraged to investigate how different agents engage with sites against the backdrop of politics of identity. How can various approaches towards site be discussed and developed in a political perspective?
Submission Requirements
A one-page abstract of maximum 400 words + keywords and a one-page CV are required. The abstract must contain name, title of the writer and co-writers and a contact address (email and postal) and be submitted as pdf-files to [email protected] no later than 15th February 2010.
All papers must be written and presented in English. Proposals for complete panels are welcome. Following a blind peer-review process, papers will be selected for presentation at the conference. After the conference a double blind peer-review process will accept a selection of the papers for the publication in Nordisk Arkitekturforskning/Nordic Journal of Architectural Research (For Danish contributors: NA is classified in the best rated bibliometrical category).
Contributors whose abstracts are accepted must register for the conference, pay registration fees, and prepare a full-length paper of 4000 words excl. references. Registered students qualify for a reduced registration fee.
For further inquiries, please contact Svava Riesto at [email protected] or telephone no +45 35 33 17 68.
Conference Schedule (2010):
Deadline abstracts 15 February
Notice on accept 1 March
Deadline for registration 15 April
Deadline full paper 15 April
Conference 17-18 June
Post Conference Trips 19 June
This webpage will contain more information about the conference after the 15th January.
World in Denmark 2010 is organised by Copenhagen University, Forest and Landscape, Research Group for Landscape architecture and -urbanism.