Bishopsgate
Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH
In their famous post-war study "Family and Kinship in East London", Young and Wilmott romanticised a period when a sense of community seemed to thrive. Today, in contrast, there is a widespread conviction that we live in a "broken society" with endless stories of feckless parents or feral children, and a collapse of "respect" and "trust". Will government initiatives such as Community Service Volunteers, Citizens Panels and Commissions on Integration and Cohesion help to create new social solidarities? Or do such official interventions threaten to undermine the very relations they seek to create?
Yvonne Roberts, senior associate,
The Young Foundation
Eamonn Butler, director, Adam Smith Institute; author,
"The Rotten State of Britain";
Alastair Donald, urban designer, researcher and co-editor,
"The Future of Community";
Steve Wyler, director, Development Trusts Association;
Chair: Austin Williams, director, Future Cities
Project & Battle of Ideas' committee member
2:
30pm – 4:00pm
British
Library, Conference Centre, Main Auditorium, 96 Euston Road, London
With over half the world’s population now living in cities,
and Mumbai set to become the world’s largest by 2015, questions
about what makes the experience of living in cities distinctive
take on a new urgency.
Panellists:
Mani Sankar Mukherji (Sankar). worked as a street hawker, a typewriter
cleaner, a part-time school teacher and a clerk in a jute and
gunny broking firm to earn a living. Two of his novels Seemabaddha (Company Limited) and Jana Aranya (The Middle Man) were
made into films by Satyajit Ray.
Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship.
Namdeo Dhasal is a maverick Marathi poet.. In 1972, he founded Dalit Panther, the militant organisation modelled on Black Panther. In 1999, he was awarded the Padma Shree for literature.
Austin Williams is director of the Future Cities Project and the architectural producer of NBS Learning Channels.
Chair:A decade on from Towards an Urban Renaissance, the word ‘community’ takes precedence over the ‘city’, and ‘designing behaviour’ is frequently prioritised over ‘personal freedom’. Do these new labels mask the fact that we have lost sight of what “a city” really is?
Speakers:
Hank Dittmar: Chief Executive, Prince's Foundation; Karl Sharro: Future Cities Project; Quentin
Stevens: University College London; Dan Hill: Urban Initiatives; Edwin Heathcote: architecture
critic, Financial Times - tbc;
Chair, Alastair Donald: urban designer, researcher and
writer; founder member of ManTowNHuman; Co-Editor, Future of Community
Hosted by the Urban Design Group
We are constantly being told that we are losing a ‘sense of community’. This book shows that the notion of community is actually under threat from the very thing supposed to protect it: relentless government intervention.
Read more on the Future of Community BLOG hereLaunched at the Belfast Salon. Read more here...
Go on almost any architectural website today, and you'll find proclamations of how "innovative", "forward-thinking" and "experimental" they are. But what does it really mean? Here, two brave architects:
Sean Griffiths, director, Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT);
and
CJ Lim, director, Studio 8 Architects
explained their innovative projects …and were grilled by:
Helen Groves, architect director, Bristol, BDP
Kieran Long, editor, Architects' Journal
Jeremy Myerson, director, Helen Hamlyn Centre and InnovationRCA
Karl Sharro, KPF and co-founder, ManTowNHuman
Amin Taha, director, Amin Taha Architects
Benedict Zucchi, board director, BDP
Chair: Austin Williams, director, Future Cities Project
See the debate here
Speakers:
Alastair Donald: Urban Designer, researcher and writer; founder member of ManTowNHuman; PhD candidate, Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, University of Cambridge.
Richard Brown: Urban Policy Consultant; set up GLA’s Architecture and Urbanism Unit; led GLA’s work on the London 2012 bid and Thames Gateway development programmes.
Tony McGuirk: Chairman, BDP (Building Design Partnership); architect and urban designer.
Steve McAdam: Architect, founder and director, Fluid Design; visiting lecturer, London Metropolitan University; consultant, Council of Europe, youth inclusion; author & co-author of several books published by them.
Chair, Michael Owens: senior urban regeneration expert; former Head of Development Policy at the London Development Agency.
The event was sponsored by the Building Design Partnership
mantownhuman
BBC "Newsnight" coverage of the Manifesto: WATCH HERE...
See Blog for more information and updates
1. THE NEW PAROCHIALISTS
Transport and mobility denied
2. THE OPT-OUTS
Energy and the end of universal provision
3. THE LIMIT-SETTERS
Architecture's loss of humanity
4. THE INDOCTRINATORS
Environmental educators' underhand tactics
5. THE PESSIMISTS [read
an edited sample]
Putting the brakes on China and India
6. THE NEW COLONIALISTS
The Developing World's sustainable underdevelopment
7. THE MISANTHROPISTS
America's unease with Modernity
CONCLUSION
Reclaiming the future
Visit the Enemies of Progress blog site for further details, reviews and upcoming events
Comments from the previous Future Cities Project discussions at the Battle
of Ideas include:
'It was fantastically stimulating and I finished the weekend
with lots to ponder.' Naresh Fernandes (editor, Time
Out Mumbai); 'I enjoyed it very much... it would be good to
investigate further.' Kieran Long (editor, Architects'
Journal); 'It was actually all rather enjoyable.' Tristram
Hunt (broadcaster); 'I really enjoyed taking part and will
be happy to be involved again in some way.' Professor Michael
Oxley (De Montfort University)
The
Campaign for Drawing Launch Event, September 2007
The Bishopsgate Institute and Foundation
Austin
Williams' workshop Condensing Complexity will get people thinking about how to take a range of complex
everyday instructions - from fire safety to the Highway Code -
simplify them, and convey them in graphic form.
Effectively, this is the visual equivalent of the "Plain English" campaign... The "Easy Graphics" campaign!
June2007:Shanghai Administration Institute Programme, University of Oxford
February 2007Austin Williams; Corey Powell, editor of Discover magazine; Ronald Bailey, science correspondent, Reason magazine; and Professor Emeritus Martin Hoffert at The New School, 55 West 13th Street, New York
For more information click here
Nowadays, buildings are credited with changing our behaviour, promoting our welfare, and addressing intractable social problems. For instance, it has been argued that large windows in schools improve students' performance; natural ventilation increases productivity in offices; well designed homes and neighbourhoods prevent anti-social behaviour; healthy sports stadia reduce spectator obesity; and hospitals with soothing decor help people get better quicker.
This debate addressed the question of whether we have lost our ability to argue for better provision in its own terms and for its own sake. No doubt the way buildings are designed do make us feel good, but how transient is this response? In order to tick the right funding box, is it justifiable to over-claim for the immediate benefits of a project, or do we lose something in the process?
The Bartlett School of Architecture, London
Read Dave Clements' speech from the conference here
