Social Design: Urban Change
Donnerstag, 01. Januar 1970 - 01:00 Uhr
Universitätsgalerie im Heiligenkreuzer Hof
Cities are condensed descriptions of urban life. They are the most successful self-generated environments of mankind to date. Contemporary growing cities are colonizing the world and can no longer be understood as spatial entities. They behave more like living organisms. Like amoebas, today´s cities grow under the conditions of continuous change. The rigidity of form and program has been replaced by an open system in which growth provokes conflict and disorder – and ultimately change.
Over the last decades, growing urban agglomerations have been extremely successful in absorbing population growth and drawing in rural population. As a result, almost more than half of the world?s population of today lives in cities. The ?World Urbanization Prospects? published by the United Nations is expecting that in 2050 the world´s urban population will likely be of the same size as the world?s total population was in 2002. As a result, cities will increasingly be put under pressure due to densification and concentration of population, economy, capital and media as well as culture and knowledge.
The "Social Design : Urban Change" conference will discuss interdisciplinary strategic tools to address these urban challenges. It will focus on urban transformation in a rapidly urbanizing world. Aiming at connecting artistic research and theoretic sciences with hands-on practice of spatial and cultural co-production, interweaving the discourse into the very fabric of society.
Banny Banerjee (Stanford ChangeLabs / USA)
Anna Greenspan (Hacked Matter, Shanghai / China)
Pedro Gadanho (MoMA / USA)
Sophie Goltz (City Curator Hamburg / Germany),
Thomas Hirschhorn (Artist / Switzerland)
Kilian Kleinschmidt (Innovation & Planning Agency, Austria)
Shaheen Merali (Curator, London / UK)
Katja Schechtner (MIT Media Lab / Austria, USA)