November 17, 2011 – 2:43 pm
The authors of the Frankfurt School maintained that a radical change in society was necessary; however, they always refused to suggest any practice. The role of the thinker, as famously argued by Adorno, was not to engage with society and politics in a direct fashion, because this would imply being caught in a stream [...]
By external contributor Deepa Ramaswamy.
A lot has been already said about the slums of Mumbai and their role within the city’s memory and identity. Dharavi, which is supposedly the largest of Mumbai’s slums, figures very prominently in most of these discourses. Dharavi has developed and expanded over the last few decades [...]
The separation barrier sneaking by Abu Dis from the al-Quds University campus, on 8 December 2010. These Palestinian landscapes are naturally very contrasted and defined, and with their sparse vegetation they often resemble the backdrops of some Italian early Renaissance paintings.
The wall in its context is a text-book example of low entropy structure. Like an [...]
Al Bayyadah is a town in Cyrenaica that was founded in 1938 and originally called D’Annunzio, after the famous Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. These agricultural settlements were built around an architectural core formed by a church, an administrative building, and a section of the Fascist party, which functioned as space for events and public gatherings: “God, [...]
Cross posted from michaeledwards.org.uk
Have just greatly enjoyed Owen Hatherley (2010) A guide to the new ruins of Great Britain, London: Verso. It’s a rollicking tour of the cities of England + Cardiff + Glasgow, evaluating and describing what’s been done to them in modern times. Sometimes gleeful, more often rueful or rude. The underlying analysis is a [...]
October 30, 2010 – 2:00 pm
This is an introduction to a paper presented at the 1st international conference in political economy. The full paper can be read here. With the topic of ‘crisis in capitalism’, I tried to seek a mechanism of land rent which is a fundamental source of capital investment in the built environment. This is also a [...]
October 24, 2010 – 7:00 pm
When looking into the ‘This is not a Gateway Festival’ (TINAG) home page, in a somewhat confuse profusion of points, I found ‘hidden’ in the 10th line of topics an interesting analysis of some ‘keys to the city’… such important ‘keys’ shouldn’t be so secret.
One of the things that they illustrate (as shown above) is [...]
September 10, 2010 – 11:47 am
In the book Participation, Claire Bishop underlines three common aspects of participatory art: the desire to create an active/thinking subject who will be able to formulate their own social/political position from the experience of the work; asserting a socially oriented and egalitarian position for themselves by ceding part of their authorship to participants; and the [...]
January 19, 2010 – 1:04 pm
Sent by Diego García Mejuto:
The Bartlett Planning informal talks on places and cultures are back with ‘Galicia: (re)presenting a Spanish regional space’, by Diego García Mejuto, research student at the Bartlett School of Planning.
When: Wednesday 20th January at 4:30pm
Where: Room 5.17b, Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB
All welcome
Contact information: Amparo Tarazona Vento, a.vento@ucl.ac.uk
December 14, 2009 – 4:37 pm
Sent by Diego Garcia Mejuto:
This month a new initiative was launched at the Bartlett School of Planning. The ‘Lonely Planner’ series consist of informal talks given by Bartlett Planning PhD students on places they are very familiar with, followed by questions and discussion. The aim of these talks is to learn and discuss about certain [...]