Mobilities of Design: Transnational Transfers in Asian Architecture and Urban Planning, 1960-Present
Conference at Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore
20-21 November 2013
Download the program leaflet here
Overview
This conference investigates the transnational transfer of architectural expertise to, from, and within Asia from 1960 to the present--as well as its consequences for contemporary conditions of urbanization in the region today. The goal of the event is to uncover the multidirectional exchanges in architecture, planning, engineering, design pedagogy, and building technology that have taken place in Asia over the past 50 years; and to show how this acquired knowledge has been developed, appropriated, mixed, and modified in professional practice. Bringing academic research papers into dialogue with the insights of practitioners, the event will offer a heterogeneous genealogy of the current material, economic, and institutional conditions of urbanization in the contemporary Asian city. By developing an innovative historical framework, the conference aims to contextualize examples of cross-cultural knowledge transfer that are taking place in Asian cities such as Singapore today.
Organizers
The event is a collaboration between the ETH Zurich’s Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) and the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC). It is organized by Max Hirsh (FCL) and Łukasz Stanek (MARC).
FCL is an interdisciplinary research center focused on urban sustainability in a global frame. Based in Singapore, it is the first research program of ETH Zurich’s Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability. The Future Cities Laboratory is home to a community of more than 100 PhD, post-doctoral and senior researchers working in the fields of architecture, engineering, and urban planning.
MARC was established at Manchester University in 2006. The Centre is developing a research agenda that aims at critically understanding the co-evolution of design and development strategies and the socioeconomic processes shaping cities.
Program
Wednesday 20 November
Thursday 21 November
Australian Educated Architects and the Professionalization of Practice and Training in Malaysia, 1960-1980: Peter Scriver, University of Adelaide
Building the Non-Aligned Babylon: Vladimir Kulic, Florida Atlantic University
Australians and Africans in a Post-Colonial Asian Empire. The Oberoi Hotel Group in the 1960s and 1970s: Amit Srivastava, University of Adelaide
1230 Lunch
1330 Transfer Typologies (Chair: Max Hirsh)
The International Hotel in Post-Revolutionary China: Cole Roskam, University of Hong Kong
Constructing Masdar City: Gökçe Günel, Columbia University
The Nation’s I/Eye. The National Art Gallery Singapore, 2010-2015: Mechtild Widrich, ETH Zürich
1500 Coffee BreakAfter Transnationalism: Indian Modernism in the Age of Globalization: Vikramaditya Prakash, University of Washington, Seattle
Practical Utopias: Global Urbanism in Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo: Jonathan Solomon, Syracuse University
Songdo: Transnational Networks in the Reproduction of a Ubiquitous Ecocity: Sofia T. Shwayri, Seoul National University
1700 Wrap-Up & Final Discussion