051-0623-16L  Travellers. Ocean Territories - Mapping Maritime Geopolitics, Migration and Global Trade

SemesterAutumn Semester 2016
LecturersM. Topalovic
Periodicityyearly recurring course
Language of instructionEnglish


AbstractTravellers is a series of five lectures and conversations about ways of perceiving, studying and portraying urban territories. Each of the guest speakers is a traveler - a person who places the direct observation and experience of urban landscapes in the core of their practice.
During the autumn of 2016, we will investigate the ocean as a territory.
ObjectiveThe architectural ways of looking, concepts and techniques are unstable at large territorial scales, and yet, urban territories can be seen as crucial contexts for the production of architecture. Seeing an extended urban territory as part of the city - its mirror - can reflect back in the ways we see the city itself, and its architectures.

Once a year in autumn, with students and invited guests, we will consider: How can architects look at, study and design urban territories or the "city's constitutive outside": the periphery, the agglomeration, the countryside and the hinterland? What are the motives (aesthetic, political) architects can have in engaging with these territories? The aim is to discuss concepts and techniques for territorial investigations and projects.

During the autumn of 2016, we will investigate the ocean as a territory through the lens of artists, researchers and architects focusing on mapping maritime geopolitics, migration and global trade.
ContentWhat is the ocean as a territory? Once imagined as a boundless space, largely untouched by human activity, are oceans still a common horizon bringing together the cities and peoples along their shores? Can the open nature of the sea resist the transformative forces of the carved and conflicted earthly masses it is enclosing? Is the ocean space shaped by the strategic control of resources and trade routes? What is the role of the architects in investigating, describing and visualising the urban dynamic of the ocean space? Can ocean territories be designed?

Taking different perspectives, from history, to activism, geopolitics, and design, travellers who have been crossing the global ocean following refugee migrations, onboard container ships and along ancient maritime routes, contribute elements for an urban portrait of ocean territories.

03.10.2016
On Migration:
MANUEL HERZ
architect/researcher

17.10.2016
On Urbanisation of the Sea:
NANCY COULING
architect/researcher

31.10.2016
(TBC)

14.11.2016
(TBC)

28.11.2016
On the Island of Lampedusa:
ANA DANA BEROS
architect/researcher
conversation with Dubravka Sekulic

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