Guest Lectures
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Past 2010 Guest Lectures
Eli Støa (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Tuesday, 7 December 2010, 4pm
"Towards Sustainable Residential Practices"
Venue: Humanities Bridgeford Street Building G7
Eli Støa Guest Lecture Poster (PDF)
Abstract: The practices of users are a frequently overlooked aspect of sustainable architecture projects. In this talk, Eli Støa will present an ongoing interdisciplinary research project set out to explore the planning and design process of a new sustainable neighbourhood called Brøset in Trondheim, Norway. She interprets architecture as a network involving artefacts, humans, and processes and will discuss the interrelationship between these aspects may be implicated in the transformation of residential practices and how this is approached in the research.
Biography: Eli Støa is a practicing architect and a professor in housing at the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. She has been conducting research for about 20 years on the architectural, social, and cultural aspects of housing and homes, with a more recent focus on sustainable housing cultures.
Harald Rohracher (University of Klagenfurt)
Thursday 8 July 2010
"Niche Development or Regime Change? Austrian Passive Houses Go Mainstream"
Harald Rohracher Guest Lecture Poster (PDF)
Abstract: The presentation will analyse the dynamic development of highly energy-efficient passive houses in Austria with a focus on the transformation of the current construction regime and the role of intermediary organisations in establishing a socio-technical niche for such buildings. Emphasis will be put on critical phases in the growth of the passive house niche and the challenges still lying ahead.
Biography: Harald Rohracher is Associate Professor at the Department for Science and Technology Studies, University of Klagenfurt and has been co-founder and director (1999-2008) of the Inter-University Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture (IFZ) in Graz, Austria. 2009-10 he has been Joseph A. Schumpeter Fellow at Harvard University. His research focuses on the co-evolution of technology and society and the governance of socio-technical change towards greater sustainability, particularly in the field of energy and the built environment.
Marc Schlossberg (University of Oregon)
Thursday 20 May 2010
"From Ivory Tower to Tilling the Soil: Universities as Catalysts for Sustainable City Design"
Marc Schlossberg Guest Lecture Poster (PDF)
Abstract: This talk and discussion will focus on an urgent new role for higher education institutions to serve as catalysts for sustainable city design. The Sustainable City Year programme at the University of Oregon (USA) directs the expertise of faculty and students toward a single city to help on sustainability issues. In this model of education, students get hands-on experience in working with city officials and city officials get a range of new ideas from the next generation of thinkers and practitioners. This year, the Sustainable City Year program is working with the City of Gresham (Oregon) and includes 15 faculty members, 24 courses, 7 disciplines, and 100,000 hours of student and faculty effort to address the city’s needs.
Biography: Marc Schlossberg, PhD, is an Associate Professor of City Planning and co-director of the Sustainable Cities Initiative at the University of Oregon (USA). He is currently a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sheffield¹s Town and Regional Planning Department.
Dr Tatjana Schneider (Sheffield University)
Wednesday 5 May
Tatjana Schneider Guest Lecture Poster (PDF)
Abstract: Today, architecture often is simply understood as a matter of concept and design ending up in the production of a building. The problem with reducing the architect to someone who merely designs or conceptually develops buildings is that work and projects are determined by externally set parameters. Architects often merely re-act rather than initiate, re-spond rather than take action, re-ply rather than co-formulate. The lecture will unravel episodes of architecture where spatial intelligence is applied beyond a built project through engaging with the unknown in mutual collaborations yet starting from a clear theoretical or sometimes ideological basis. This form of 'spatial agency' transgresses traditional disciplinary boundaries to understand architecture as an essentially political event.
Biography: Tatjana Schneider is a lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, where she teaches design studio, history and theory. She worked in architectural practice in Germany and the UK, and has taught, lectured and published widely (including Flexible Housing with Jeremy Till) and was a member of the worker's cooperative G.L.A.S. (Glasgow Letters on Architecture and Space). Her work focuses on the production and political economy of the built environment. Current work includes a research project on Spatial Agency with Jeremy Till and Nishat Awan, Routledge (2011).
Professor Thomas Barrie (Professor of Architecture, North Carolina State University)
Thursday 29 April 2010
"The Sacred In-between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture"
Thomas Barrie Guest Lecture Poster (PDF)
Abstract: This presentation will discuss broadened contexts, approaches and understandings of architecture through the lens of the mediating roles often performed by sacred architecture. Its principle argument is that, similar to the intermediary roles of religion, sacred architecture typically served as a physical and symbolic mediator in support of the socio-political, doctrinal and ritual agendas of the religions it was built to serve. An essential means of understanding sacred architecture is through the recognition of its roles as an in-between place believed by its creators to establish connections to what otherwise would be inaccessible.
Biography: Thomas Barrie, AIA is a Professor of Architecture at North Carolina State University where he served as School Director from 2000 – 2007. Professor Barrie’s scholarship on the symbolism, ritual use and cultural significance of architecture has brought him to sacred places around the world, and he has published and lectured extensively in his subject area. He is an award-winning architect and the author of The Sacred In-Between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture (Routledge, 2010) and Spiritual Path, Sacred Place: Myth Ritual and Meaning in Architecture (Shambhala, 1996).
Professor Jane Jacobs (University of Edinburgh)
Tuesday 9 March 2010
"Ecologies of Dwelling: Maintaining High-rise Housing in Singapore"
Jane Jacobs Guest Lecture Poster (PDF)
Abstract: We usually assume that a building gets first designed, then built, then inhabited. From Ingold's alternative perspective however, a ‘building is a process that is continually going on’ and it is always about calibrating the balance between human, organic and non-organic components. This talk applies this thinking to the large, bureaucratic, mass housing ‘system’ in Singapore. I demonstrate that once built, a high-rise starts on its journey of decay. To keep a building built as it was intended requires constant maintenance and repair work, a kind of everyday building.
Biography: Jane Jacobs is Chair in Cultural Geography at University of Edinburgh. Her work has been in the field of postcolonial studies and urban cultures and her most recent research is a sociotechnical
study of the many afterlives of the modernist high-rise housing. She is co-author (with K. Gelder) of Uncanny Australia (1998), co-editor (with R. Fincher) of Cities of Difference (1998), and co-author (with S. Cairns) of Architecture and Waste (2011).