Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion – 7 May 2015
Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion - 7 May 2015
07
May
Through practical examples and illustrated case studies, this talk will address how architecture and design have been employed as agents of social and political change, and as catalysts for spatial and urban transformations in cities across the world.
About the Talk
Through practical examples and illustrated case studies, this talk will address how architecture and design have been employed as agents of social and political change, and as catalysts for spatial and urban transformations in cities across the world. From employing design to negotiate new social contracts in the work of Stalker and Stealth, to Teddy Cruz’s design of new political and economic processes, to designing new protocols for citizen interaction with public institutions by DESIS and Cohabitation Strategies, and to designing new models of urban pedagogy by the Center for Urban Pedagogy and Hester Street Collaborative, the talk will present a compendium of the emerging and innovative models of design-driven urban practice. This work offers important new insights because it moves beyond more conventional urban interventions manifested by the design of physical objects and public amenities, to the design of new protocols, processes, infrastructures and capabilities for radically rethinking the workings of democracy “on the ground.”
About the Speaker
Miodrag Mitrasinovic is an architect, urbanist, and author. He is an Associate Professor of Urbanism and Architecture at Parsons School of Design, The New School in New York. Miodrag’s work focuses on both generative capacity and infrastructural dimensions of public space, specifically at the intersections of public policy, urban and public design, and processes of privatization of public resources. He is the author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Ashgate, 2006), co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate, 2009) and editor of Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion (Routledge, forthcoming 2015). The first two of his books received Graham Foundation Grants in 2004 and 2006 respectively. His professional and scholarly work has been published internationally.