TCAUP CENTENNIAL CONFERENCE
JANUARY 4–6 2007
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Global Place: Practice, Politics, and the Polis, the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning's centennial conference, will bring together two dozen renowned architects, urban planners, researchers and scholars from around the world. They will address questions and opportunities that architecture and planning face in an increasingly urbanized, media-driven and commoditized world.
A century ago, the planet was primarily rural; today it is half urban; and in twenty-five years it will be predominately urban. What does this mean for the design, production, sustainability and experience of our buildings and cities? For the sense of community and place?
The two-day interdisciplinary symposium kicks off on January 4 with a high-octane panel of distinguished guests, including Homi Bhabha, Charles Correa, Kenneth Frampton, Liane LeFaivre, Saskia Sassen and Michael Sorkin at Rackham Auditorium on the University of Michigan campus.
The following two days will focus on global politics and practice, including presentations by Susan Fainstein, Ken Yeang, Teddy Cruz, Dan Solomon, Marilyn Taylor, Bish Sanyal, John Habraken, Arif Hasan, and Phillip Enquist. Other sessions will focus on global cities and on sustainability and technological issues, with talks by David Orr, John Thackara, Anthony Townsend, Anne Spirn, Anne Vernez Moudon and Alex Wall.
"This conference is of centennial significance, bringing together the world's leading social theorists and design practitioners to discuss what kind of architecture and urbanism is possible and desirable in this high velocity global century," says Douglas Kelbaugh FAIA, professor and dean of the college.
Other topics of discussion include information technology, community and the city, and mega-cities, punctuated by case studies and panel discussions among guests and faculty respondents from other schools at the University of Michigan. "Our conference title, Global Place, seeks to capture that paradox—that is, the challenge of creating place in a world dominated by the forces of placelessness," says Robert Fishman, Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning and one of the conference's organizers.
Forces such as global technology and information flows, ethnic diasporas, climate change, expensive energy, transnational corporations, religious fundamentalism, and the loss of local cultural identity, challenge designers, planners, researchers and scholars in many fields. Guest respondents in each session include Lance Brown and William Saunders, as well as U-M faculty, Barbara Anderson, John King, Ann Lin, Geoff Eley, and Frederick Wherry. As the college begins its second century, this conference hopes to be a seminal moment in the international public discourse.
After the kick-off panel on Thursday evening at the Rackham Auditorium, the following two days will be held in the "Pringle" auditorium at the new Biomedical Science Research Building (BSRB) at Huron and Glen Streets, with the main entrance at Zina Pitcher and Ann Streets.
This event is part of the Arts on Earth initiative, a new University of Michigan program to promote the arts, which connect people here and around the world.
For more information, visit the website at www.tcaup.umich.edu/, or contact the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Please send questions about the event to tcaup100@umich.edu.
Support for the conference is provided by the Guido A. Binda Lecture Fund, the Taubman Fund, and the U-M Office of the President, Office of the Provost, and Planetizen.
