The Conference Committee invites professionals from both research and practice dealing with the built environment (architecture, engineering, urbanism, landscape architecture, planning, geography, sociology, urban history etc.) to send in abstracts for papers on one of the following sub-themes:
1. Innovation in building typology, 2. Infrastructure and the city, 3. Complex urban projects, 4. Green spaces: the city and the territory, 5. Delta urbanism: Living with water in the urban Deltas.
Methodologies, Analytical and Design studies, that investigate throughout history the potential of new, often hybrid building types, while deriving their legitimacy from the specific conditions of the new urban configurations and the subsequent transformation of existing settlements. Further, we welcome contributions investigating the impact of contemporary mobility patterns and environmental transformations (such as rising water levels) on issues such as density and functional/social mix in relation to design studies on new building types.
Infrastructure, from road and train networks to IT has always had an important role in the functioning of cities and also as social meeting place in the city. This sub-theme welcomes abstracts presenting methodological, analytical and design studies on the relationship between infrastructure and the layout and functioning of cities, but encourage especially contributions which address the impact of societal changes (see conference brief) on this relation. We are not only interested in the effects on cities and their configurations, but also in the effects on the physical infrastructure itself, e.g. how might these find new uses or what to do with a possible excess of infrastructure in the future? An historical approach is here as important as an understanding of the current situation and predictions of the future.
The societal problems we are facing in combination with existing strongly layered urban systems, a highly unpredictable future and a wide spectrum of multiple requests and stakeholders make urban projects highly complex. Within this sub-theme we want to address the impact of this complexity on new ways of analyzing and designing cities and regions. We encourage researchers and designers to send in abstracts discussing new analytic and design methods, technical tools, simulation models, city games in which, besides the aforementioned complexity, the impact on the (new) urban configuration is central.
Within this sub-theme we want to specifically invite researchers and designers who investigate the role green landscape (verdure) can play in the changing conditions described in the conference brief. Examples of research fields are the urban food and energy production, but also the physical integration of work, leisure and dwelling in relation to the public realm of condensed cities, including green spaces and the role of the territory. We especially encourage contributions that are truly integrating all scale levels, from local neighborhood to city and regional scale. When discussing food production it’s interesting to show local possibilities (urban farming) and its impact on the whole urban configuration, but also the quantitative role such urban farming can play in the cities’ metabolism.
Delta-Urbanism focuses on the need for a redefinition of urbanization processes. More than half of the world population lives in cities today and especially the effects of climate changes increase the vulnerability of people in areas with risks of flooding. Deltas are areas where this tension is present in an extreme way. The development of a new relationship between urban design and engineering-technology is considered as crucial here. We encourage researchers and designers to contribute with methodological, analytical and design studies to discuss problems and solutions concerning water-management, flood-defence and urbanization.