Dear list members
We are writing to invite you for the third Building Event 'MATERIAL BODY
TECHNOLOGY' taking place on FRIDAY 2 MARCH in the DRUMMOND LIBRARY
(Surgeons' Square, High School Yard, Edinburgh, EH1 1LZ). The workshop
starts at 9.30am. It includes presentations of Miles Glendinning,
Elizabeth Shove and Remo Pedreschi as well as reportage from the Highrise
Project.
Could you please let us know if you are participating in the event.
We are looking forward to hearing from you
Best wishes
Jane M. Jacobs
Stephen Cairns
Ignaz Strebel
MATERIAL BODY TECHNOLOGY
BUILDING EVENT III
Friday, 2 March 2007
Drummond Library
Surgeons' Square
High School Yards
Edinburgh
EH1 1LZ
This workshop is focused on the relationship between building materials,
architectural technologies and the human body. Conventionally, technology
and matter are understood to stand in opposition to organically defined
categories such as the body, life, society or culture. The seemingly inert
and passive character of materials are posed against the both the
programmed, regulated and mechanistic character of technology and the agency
that is credited to those 'life' categories. Yet, the evidence of the
buildings in which we work and live shows this conventional division to be a
caricature. For example, the willful nature of materials is announced when
steel rusts, concrete spawls, or asbestos is discovered. Similarly, the
precarious agency we experience in relation to everyday technologies is
disclosed when they falter or fail and no longer blend so seamlessly with
us. This workshop brackets the terms 'material', 'technology', 'body' as a
prompt to questioning the active role each takes in the making and unmaking
of everyday building events. It will activate recent discussions on the
prostheticisation of the body, domestic routine and everyday technology, and
technological and material 'agency' in relation to architectures of various
kinds.
PROGRAMME
09.30 Coffee and pastries at Drummond Library
10.00 Opening remarks
10.15 The Red Road highrise as a black box
Jane Jacobs, Stephen Cairns, Ignaz Strebel
11.00 Coffee
11.30 Conventional Concrete: ‘everyday’ systems for postwar multi-storey blocks
Miles Glendinning
12.15 (title tbc)
Remo Pedreschi
13.00 Lunch
13.45 DIY: projects, practices and distributed competence
Elizabeth Shove
14.30 Getting Red Road to Work: a look into the Highrise Project
Jane Jacobs, Stephen Cairns, Ignaz Strebel
15.15 Discussion
16.00 Workshop close
SPEAKERS
Miles Glendinning is Reader in Architectural Conservation at the Edinburgh
College of Art and co-author of Tower Block: Modern Public Housing in
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (Yale University Press, 1994)
www.eca.ac.uk
Elizabeth Shove is Professor in the Sociology Department at Lancaster
University and author of Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience (Berg, 2004)
www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/staff/shove/shove.htm
Remo Pedreschi is Professor of Architecture in the School of Arts, Culture
and Environment, University of Edinburgh
homepages.ed.ac.uk/rpedresc/
Stephen Cairns, Jane M Jacobs and Ignaz Strebel, AHRC Highrise Project,
Geography and Architecture, Edinburgh University
www.highriseproject.ac.uk
THE HIGHRISE PROJECT
www.architecture.ed.ac.uk and www.geosciences.ed.ac.uk/geography
www.highriseproject.ac.uk
DENSITY INSIDE OUT (FINAL PROJECT CONFERENCE, JUNE 6-8 2007)
Information on: www.geos.ed.ac.uk/geography/DensityInsideOut.html
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