AESOP TG PSUC 2021 international meeting
Between THE HOME & THE SQUARE: bridging the boundaries of public space
October 22-23, 2021 | Aristotele University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
http://southeuropean-cities.arch.auth.gr/en/betweenthehomeandthesquare#callforpapers2021
The Research Unit for South European Cities of the School of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, will host the next meeting of the AESOP Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures (AESOP TG PSUC) in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Theme
The meeting is entitled “Between the home and the square: bridging the boundaries of public space”. It is structured around the concept of boundaries of public space and the relation between public space and more private spheres of urban life, like the home. By taking an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, the meeting will discuss, challenge and rethink traditional boundaries between public and private, legal and illegal, planned and unplanned, formal and informal, natural and social, digital and material, familiar and uncanny. Moreover, the meeting will reflect on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the making and unmaking of boundaries within the public space as well as between public space and home.
Format
The meeting is organised as a two-day event, which will be preceded by a seven-day workshop. The two-day event will combine keynote speeches, the contributions to the Call for Papers, fieldtrips and roundtables. The workshop will be an international, urban teaching, action research and design workshop that will investigate transformations of housing and public space in sites of major importance in Thessaloniki. It will provide the opportunity for participants to discuss, exchange views, and propose ideas around the topic of boundaries between public and private spaces in Thessaloniki and beyond.
Call for Papers
Cities around the world change rapidly in response to processes of financial crises, international migration, climate change, globalisation and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Public spaces are essential ingredients of the urban experience and play a crucial role in this transition (Madanipour et al., 2014). Seeking to understand the ways in which public space can operate as a key component for the creation of ‘inclusive, connected, safe and accessible’ cities (UN Habitat, 2016), the meeting is structured around the concept of boundaries of public space and the relation between public space and more private spheres of urban life, like the home.
Marxist understandings of relational space have already emphasized the need to deconstruct dichotomies between public and private (Lefebvre, 1991). Gender studies have early enough challenged the dichotomy of public and private space (Massey 1984), while more recently, feminist approaches to public space foreground affective care practices, everyday lived experiences and bodily encounters as crucial elements that transcend fixed boundaries in public space (Viderman & Knierbein, 2018). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shed new light to interrelations of homes, neighbourhoods and public open space accessibility in pragmatic terms of real life, democracy, and its policing. Thus, a critical exploration of the ways in which the boundaries of public space are challenged, and new conceptualisations emerge is nowadays increasingly timely and salient.
The meeting articulates its theme in a way to encourage approaches that:
1. bridge the traditional analytical categories, such as home and public space, public and private, digital and material;
2. bridge the different disciplinary divisions that divide current research and practice and encourage cross-fertilisations and hybrid understandings;
3. bridge the boundaries between research, policy and practice focusing on the ways these three can inform and transform each other;
4. negotiate divisions in public space; age, gender, social, cultural, ethnic, religious and political dimensions as well as issues of social and environmental justice for improving inclusiveness, promoting social and environmental justice and meeting complexity in the public space changing terrain;
5. reflect on new typologies of emerging practices and agents of change that reconstitute lived homes and public spaces.
We invite contributions that address, but are not limited, to one or more of the following themes:
1. Inhabiting the square: exclusionary practices, repression, homelessness, refugees, dissent, participatory / performative appropriation.
2. Housing and public space: spaces of the everyday, neighbourhood spaces, inconspicuous parks, design considerations, everyday routines, psychoanalytic approaches to the public, divided spaces.
3. The limits of publicness: management, authorities, ownership, appropriation, affective, performative and artistic practices, digital contestations and cross-overs.
4. Νegotiating ownership: housing and public space production ‘from below’, housing coops, collective habitation, squats, gated communities, suburban houses, institutional change.
References
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The production of space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Madanipour, A., Knierbein, S. & Degros, A. (2014) A Moment of Transformation. In: Madanipour, A., Knierbein, S. & Degros, A. (eds.) Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe? New York: Routledge.
Massey, D. (1984) Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press
Viderman, T. & Knierbein, S. (2018) Reconnecting public space and housing research through affective practice. Journal of Urban Design, 1-16.
Contacts
For further information on AESOP TG PSUC Thessaloniki meeting please contact:
Evie Athanassiou (Local host Thessaloniki),
Important dates
Abstract submission deadline: 30th May, 2021
Acceptance notification: 27th June, 2021
Author registration: 27th July, 2021
Organising Committee
Evie Athanassiou, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Local host)
Charis Christodoulou, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Athina Vitopoulou, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Matina Kapsali, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Maria Karagianni, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
TG Representatives
Sara Santos Cruz (Portugal) and Burcu Yigit Turan (Sweden)
Scientific Committee
Evie Athanassiou, Professor, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Nadia Charalambous. Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Charis Christodoulou, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Αlex Deffner, Professor of Urban and Leisure Planning, Department of Planning and Regional Development, School of Engineering, University of Thessaly (UTH), Greece
Gabriella Esposito De Vita, Senior Researcher, National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Italy
Jeff Hou, ASLA, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urban Design & Planning, College of Built Environments, University of Washington, U.S.A.
Sandra Huning, City and regional sociology, Faculty of spatial planning, TU Dortmund, Germany
Ares Kalandides, Professor of Place Management, Berlin und Umgebung, Germany
Matina Kapsali, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & Adjunct Lecturer, School of Architecture, University of Ioannina, Greece
Maria Karagianni, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Spatial Planning and Development, Faculty of Engineering Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Garyfallia Katsavounidou, Assistant Professor of Urban Design and Planning, School of Spatial Planning and Development, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Sabine Knierbein, Professor for Urban Culture and Public Space, Faculty of Architecture and Planning/ Future Lab, Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space, TU Wien, Austria
Penny Koutrolikou, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Sasa Lada, Emeritus Professor, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Christine Mady, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Ramez Chagoury Faculty of Architecture, Art and Design, Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon
Irini Micha, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Stefania Ragozino, Researcher, National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Italy
Sara Santos Cruz, Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher of CITTA, Spatial Planning and Environment Division, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal
Ceren Sezer, Research Associate, Faculty of Architecture, Chair of Urban Design, Institute for Urban Design and European Urbanism RWTH, Aachen University, Germany
Dimitra Siatitsa, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Socrates Stratis. Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Burcu Yigit Turan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Division of Landscape Architecture, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
Tihomir Viderman, Research Associate, Chair of Urban Management, Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Urban Planning, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany
Athina Vitopoulou, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Athena Yiannakou, Professor of Urban Planning and Development, School of Spatial Planning and Development, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
