Metamorphoses of the Contemporary City

The workshop seeks to explore the nature of urban transformations in areas where the urban topography taken as a whole and/or specific sites were radically transformed due to significant events, which resulted in a rift in the understanding of the relationship between place and identity. The workshop will focus on cities in different geographies as case studies, and will draw on insights from disciplines sharing an architectural and urban interest, in order to address the general theme through various perspectives. The starting point of the workshop will be the exploration and critique of the concepts of memory, identity and metamorphosis, as they are used in contemporary discourse on architectural and urban issues. Through this initial theoretical critique, the workshop will ask general questions such as: Can the re-appropriation and/or re-construction of an urban topography be understood as a de-ritualization of the city, implying a transformation in the understanding of the city from a context in which political, ideological and so forth agendas had been sedimented and ‘ritualized’? Can such a transformation be understood as generating forms of social and political praxes able to address the various historical layers embodied in the urban fabric, in order to mediate different experiences of collective memory and give a consensus on the perception of urban identity? What interpretative and analytic approaches would be most appropriate to address such emerging urban scenarios and new forms of urban identity? How can these approaches be used in order to establish a way of concretely addressing the rehabilitation of ‘de-ritualized’ urban topographies? The workshop aims to generate a dialogue between researchers dealing with different urban contexts, which share the general character of transformation and re-appropriation as described above. More specific themes might include urban transformations in: - conflict and diversity - ideologies - mega-events – the local and the global