The 4th class will be on FEBRUARY 20, 2012, at Altes Finanzamt, Schönstedtstraße 7, in Neukölln. We welcome everybody to join our discussion of Jean-Philippe Vassal’s “Toward a Performative Contextualism”

Lecture by Anne Lacaton, Lacaton & Vassal, France from Ilka & Andreas Ruby on Vimeo.

The European urban condition stands out from those of the rest of the world. Currently, the European population is shrinking and ageing faster than any other world-region, but this does not prevent the growing push for the city. Europe currently leads the rest of the world in reaching the 75-90-3 split. Thus, the next collective core responsibility and challenge for city makers must lie explicitly in the existing city. In re-city rather then new-city. Re-City is about the transformation, renovation and re-invention of our cities. It can only be achieved through an all-in-one scheme of any scale, any alliance, any approach and any ‘rules and regulations’ rather than the rigid enforcement of densification or the pushing-through of big projects.

Find the whole announcement by the ANCB here.

Thursday, 17 February 2012, 4:30 pm

ANCB – Aedes Network Campus Berlin
Christinenstr. 18-19
10119 Berlin

Whatever the fate of the revolts of last year – and they are anything but finished – 2011 will go down as a turning point in political history and geography. There were surely many precedents: economic crises that sparked from the heart of capitalism, the anti-austerity revolts that resulted, the antiglobalization movement a decade ago, the Zapatista revolt even earlier. Yet the confluence of a still-unfolding Arab Spring, Chilean and continuing European anti-austerity revolts, Chinese strikes and the global Occupy movement, en masse made 2011 a year of transition. Neoliberalism is dominant but dead.

Announcement by the Centre for British Studies here.

Neil Smith was born 1954 in Leith, Scotland. He is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, at the Graduate Center department of the City University of New York. Neil Smith earned his Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied under David Harvey. Smith’s research explores the broad intersections among space, nature, social theory, and history, including trenchant analysis of American Empire. In his major work of social theory (“Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space”, 1984), he proposed that uneven spatial development is a function of the procedural logic of capital markets, thus, society and economies ‘produce’ space. Smith is credited with the convincing theories about the gentrification of the inner city as an economic process propelled by urban land prices and city land speculation — not a cultural preference for living in the city. (Wiki)

Website including pdf of “Uneven Development” and more recent writings here.

Monday, 13 February 2012, 18:00 hours

Centre for British Studies
Mohrenstr. 60
10117 Berlin-Mitte

This class will take place at Altes Finanzamt, Schönstedtstraße 7, in Neukölln. We welcome everybody to attend our talk. Find the “Ten Theses on Politics” here.

Hal Foster, author of the acclaimed Design and Crime, argues that a fusion of architecture and art is a defining feature of contemporary culture. While architects such as Zaha Hadid and Herzog and de Meuron draw on art to reanimate design, architecture has inspired fundamental transformations in painting, sculpture and film, which are also explored here. 

The book includes an extensive conversation with Richard Serra. At the same time Foster points to a “global style” of architecture, as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, that is analogous to the “international style” of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies—a global style that, more than any art, conveys the look of modernity today, both its dreams and its delusions. In these ways Foster demonstrates that “the art-architecture complex” is a key indicator of broader social and economic trajectories and in urgent need of analysis and debate.

Announcement by pro qm here.

Monday, 30 January 2012, 20:30 hours
Bookstore Pro qm
Almstadtstr. 48-50
10119 Berlin-Mitte

The city has undergone radical change over the past two decades or so, most dramatically in its modes of urban governing and polic(y)ing. New forms of neo-liberal urban governance in fact annul democracy: while promising equality, they produce instituted forms of governing in which political power seamlessly fuses with economic might. Governance arrangements shape the city according to the dreams, tastes and needs of the transnational economic, political, and cultural elites. In his lecture, Erik Swyngedouw will talk about what he thinks went wrong, but also about what he calls proper urban politics that foster dissent, create disagreement and trigger the experimentation with more egalitarian and inclusive urban futures. Erik Swyngedouw is professor of geography at the University of Manchester. His research interests revolve around two main issues: political ecology with a particular emphasis on the governance, politics and economics of water resources, and gegraphical political economy, paying particular attention to the articulation between local/regional and national/transnational processes. This lecture is a joint event of the Centre for British Studies and Institut for Sozialwissenschaften, Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Announcement by the Centre for British Studies here.

Monday, 30 January 2012, 17.00 hours
Centre for British Studies
Mohrenstr. 60
10117 Berlin-Mitte

kenton card photo, spring of 2008

We will begin the discussion by listing the key terms Lefebvre introduced in his essay, “The Right to the City,” so bring the terms you think are most important. And then the discussion will move to the Mockbee text.

Also check out the following brief films about the Rural Studio.

And also check out the Rural Studio‘s website.

We shall be reading “The Right to the City” by Henri Lefebvre, found in Writings on Cities, page 147-159.