Event
Archipelagos Of Changing Habitats
July 15, 2021
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
JULY 15, 2021
9 – 11 a.m. (EDT)
Presented by:
NYIT School of Architecture and Design
Master of Science in Architecture, Urban and Regional Design Program
in collaboration with
University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
Master of Architectural Composition
In 1977, Oswald Mathias Ungers anticipated the first intellectual paradigm of the shrinking city. In contrast to the reconstruction of “Berlin as Green Archipelago” it represented the testing ground of an alternative figure of a polycentric urban morphology. In 1991, Joel Garrau, in his book “Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier,” explored the different formulations of the concept of enclaves, built on the utopia of the (sub)urban villages or the so-called Golden ghettos, where privatized home spaces “Privatopia” and “Non-places” are becoming the main nodes of relationships in a complex post-metropolis society. The ARCHIPELAGOS of CHANGING HABITATS symposium traces new concepts and emerging horizons for different ways to inhabit the urban/rural/dense/non-dense conditions of spatialized urban constructs while considering current challenges and opportunities that emerge from systems that take into consideration technological, environmental, and sociocultural domains as catalysts for future urban scenarios.
Learn More
Oswald Mathias Ungers, along with his colleagues from Cornell University—Rem Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur Ovaska—anticipated the first intellectual paradigm of the shrinking city. In contrast to the reconstruction of the European city, “Berlin as Green Archipelago” represented the testing ground of an alternative figure of a polycentric urban morphology, consisting of a varied geometry of urban islands within the city. Enclaves belonging to an archipelago of architectures, as previously tested by Ungers in the American context with the Summer School of 1976, was entitled “the Urban Block: New York.”
In 1991, Joel Garrau, in his book “Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier” explored the different formulations of the concept of enclaves, built on the utopia of the (sub)urban villages, or the concept of “Sun-cities” where the commercial imaginary of a bucolic landscape has become the only medium to guarantee the fantasies (or perhaps the illusions) of alternative lifestyles; or the so-called Golden ghettoes where privatized home spaces (Privatopias) and retailing Non-places are becoming the main nodes of relationships in a complex post-metropolis society (Mac Kenzie, 1994; Auge, 2009).
What is the connection between these two stories?
In the era of the global city, the climate crises and self-confinement due to the current pandemic are slowing down a global phenomenon like, that of urbanization, seemed unstoppable. It can become a stable trend if smart working is adopted as a common practice in the post-COVID era. Without exception.
Office districts in main financial cities such as New York, London, and Milan are emptying due to the combination social distancing and digital transition as well as the rediscovery of an “augmented domesticity”. People are looking for higher living standards in cheaper areas often on the edge of the metropolis.
Perhaps, as Koolhaas states in his last exhibition “Countryside: a report”, it is time to move the core of our interests back to a renewed idea of countryside connected by ICT infrastructures and community services. Hence, the need to fight against soil consumption, the urgency to optimize the use of our resources, and the pressure for public health provisions require an open reflection among the disciplines of architecture and communities on the concept of density as a design paradigm on which to perform new forms of urbanity.
Against this framework, the ARCHIPELAGOS of CHANGING HABITATS symposium traces new concepts and emerging horizons for ways to inhabit post-COVID urban/rural/dense/non-dense conditions of spatialized urban constructs while considering current challenges and opportunities that emerge from systems that take into consideration technological, environmental, and sociocultural domains as catalysts for future urban scenarios.
Welcome
Maria R. Perbellini, M.Arch.
Dean, NYIT School of Architecture and Design
Bio
Maria R. Perbellini is the dean of the School of Architecture and Design at New York Institute of Technology and a tenured professor of Architecture. Her leadership advances design innovation, intellectual diversity, emerging computational technologies, and interdisciplinary programs. Her notable recognitions include the 2018 AIA Long Island Educator Award.
She holds a B.Arch. from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia in Italy and an M.Arch. from Pratt Institute in New York. Prior to New York Tech, Perbellini was the associate dean for graduate programs and chair of instruction in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University. She also taught at the School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin.
Perbellini is cofounder of Pongratz Perbellini Architects (PPA). Among others, PPA received the Segnalazione Premio Compasso d’Oro ADI, XXI Edition with the patented series in stoneHyperwave. Before establishing her practice, she worked in New York City for Peter Eisenman and John Reimnitz on the design of prestigious commissioned buildings and international design competitions. With Christian Pongratz, Perbellini is co-editor of the Monograph on Peter Eisenman for Korean Architects-KA (No.156, 08/1997), and the co-author of the books Natural Born CaaDesigners (Birkhauser, 2000), Cyberstone (Edilstampa, 2009), and Digital Media for Design (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2016).
Moderators
Marcella Del Signore
Director, M.S. in Architecture, Urban and Regional Design and Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design, New York Institute of Technology
Bio
Marcella Del Signore is an architect, urbanist, educator, scholar, and the principal of X-Topia, a design-research practice that explores the intersection of architecture and urbanism with technology and the public, social, and cultural realm. She is an associate professor and director of the Master of Science in Architecture, Urban and Regional Design at NYIT School of Architecture and Design. Her research focuses on interscalar design approaches that engage socio-technical systems through computation, prototyping, material and fabricated assemblies, data-driven protocols, and adaptive environments. She is the author of Urban Machines: Public Space in a Digital Culture (LISTLab, 2018; OROEditions, 2020) and the editor of Data, Matter, Design: Strategies in Computational Design (Routledge, 2020.) In 2018, she co-edited “Recalibration: On Imprecision and Infidelity” proceedings published during the 2018 ACADIA Conference, where she served as technical cochair. In 2018, she cocurated the ‘Data & Matter’ exhibition at the ECC during the 2018 Architecture Venice Biennale, and she is currently exhibiting at the 17th Architecture Venice Biennale in 2021.
Christiano Lepratti
Professor, University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
Bio
Christiano Lepratti is an Italian-German architect based in Berlin and tenured professor of Architectural Composition at the Genova University (UNIGE) since 2013. From 2012-14, he was director of the european programme "Architecture for a Responsible Future" of the International Union of Architects (UIA). With his architectural practice -malearc he realised projects in Berlin, London and Beijing and in 2011 won an architectural competition for a new city in Vietnam. He has taught and lectured in numerous universities and institutions including the Royal College of Art in London, the Technical University in Berlin, the Accademia di Mendrisio and the Royal Academy of Copenhagen. From 2017-18 was visiting professor at the TU Dresden. His research deals with the critical revision of functionalism with a special focus on the relationship between space and function.
Recent publications include:
- Lepratti C. (2016) Durban. Real and dystopias, Bruno: Venice
- Lepratti C. (2018) Does effective planning really exist? Syntagma: Freiburg
- Lepratti C. (2018) Caratteri permanenti dell'architettura sostenibile, GUP: Genova
Vittorio Pizzigoni
Director, Master of Architectural Composition, and Associate Professor, University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
Bio
Vittorio Pizzigoni, architect and associate professor, has taught architectural composition at the University of Genoa since 2013. He studied at the IUAV in Venice, where in 2008 he obtained his Ph.D. In 2004, he cofounded the baukuh architecture studio with which he won competitions in Italy and abroad, and realized projects such as the Casa della Memoria in Milan.
He has taught and lectured in numerous universities and institutions including the Architectural Association in London, Columbia University in New York, Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Accademia di San Luca in Rome, University of Trieste, Polytechnic of Milan, Cooper Union in New York, and University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2018, he was a visiting professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Since 2020, he has served as head of the Master of Architectural Composition. Selected publications:
- Pizzigoni V. (2020) Chicago, the first two hundred years, «Area», n. 168, Jen-Feb.
- Pizzigoni V., Gandolfi C. (2020), Roberto Menghi architetto e designer, prime indagini. Milano: Silvana.
- Pizzigoni V., Angelidakis A., Scelsi V. (2015) Super Superstudio. Milano: Silvana.
- Baukuh (2014) Two Essays on Architecture. Zurich: Kommode.
- Pizzigoni V. (2010) Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Le parole e gli scritti. Torino: Einaudi.
Emanuele Sommariva
Assistant Professor, University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
Bio
Emanuele Sommariva is an architect and has been an assistant professor of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Genoa UNIGE-DAD since 2020. He has been a university researcher in the faculty of Architecture and Landscape Sciences, LUH Hannover, from 2012 to 2020; a visiting scholar at TUMünchen (2011 and Universiteit Antwerpen (2018), where he obtained the Italian Academic Qualification – Associate Professorship of Urban Design and Planning (MIUR 2017). His research interests include urban recycle, infrastructural landscape, coastal transformations, urban agriculture, food and the city. He was scientific manager of the Local Research Unit in EU project: Creative Food Cycles (2018–20), Regio Branding (2017–19), and COST Urban Allotment EU (2012–16). Recent publications include:
- Sommariva E. (2015) Creating City. Urban Agriculture. Strategies for City Resilience. Trento: ListLab;
- Sommariva E. (2016) ‘Cultivar Ciudades’ in: Ecologías Emergentes. Santiago de Chile, Sa Cabana
- Sommariva E. (2019) Rural Response to Migration: New Integration Models for Abandoned Villages in Italy’ in: Graz Architecture Magazine n.15 ‘Territorial Justice’ Berlin: Jovis 2019)
- Sommariva E. (2021) Creative Food Cycles: exploring the creative dimension of regional foodsheds in Europe, in IV International Conference ISUF-H Barcelona
Panelists
Richard Weller
Meyerson Chair of Urbanism and Landscape Architecture, Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, The University of Pennsylvania
Bio
Richard Weller is the Meyerson Chair of Urbanism, professor and chair of Landscape Architecture, and co-executive director of the McHarg Center at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
At Weitzman he teaches subjects in the history of ideas of nature, contemporary urbanism, and advanced design studios. In both 2017 and 2018, he was voted by the Design Intelligence survey as one of North America’s “most admired” teachers, and in 2020 he was inducted to the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture’s (CELA) Academy of Fellows.
In over 30 years of practice, he has worked simultaneously as an academic and a consultant, specializing in the formative stages of design and planning projects ranging across all scales. His design work up to 2001 (produced largely in association with Lutzow 7 in Berlin and his partner Vladimir Sitta in Sydney) was acknowledged with a Penn Press monograph in 2005.
Weller’s creative work has received numerous awards, predominantly in international design competitions, and has been exhibited in galleries such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Gardner Museum in Boston, the MAXXI Gallery in Rome, the Guggenheim, the Venice Biennale, and the Canadian Design Museum.
Weller's recent research concerns global flash-points between biodiversity and urban growth as documented in the web-based publication ‘Atlas for the End of the World’ and the ‘The Hotspot Cities Project’. His current project is a feasibility study into the concept of a ‘World Park’.
Weller has 6 books to his name, and over 100 academic papers, book chapters, and articles, and his work has been covered in the popular press by Scientific American and National Geographic. He is also the Creative Director of the interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture LA+
This lecture concerns the relationships between urbanization and biodiversity at planetary, regional and site scales. The lecture argues that as a spatial practice design has a fundamental role to play in avoiding the apparent inevitability of the sixth extinction.
Sarah Williams
Associate Professor of Technology and Urban Planning, and Director of the Leventhal Center of Advanced Urbanism and Civic Data Design Lab, MIT
Bio
Sarah Williams is an associate professor of Technology and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she is also Director of the Civic Data Design Lab and the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Williams’ combines her training in computation and design to create communication strategies that expose urban policy issues to broad audiences and create civic change. She calls the process Data Action, which is also the name of her recent book published by MIT Press. Williams is co-founder and developer of Envelope.city, a web-based software product that visualizes and allows users to modify zoning in New York City. Before coming to MIT, Williams was Co-Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Her design work has been widely exhibited including work in the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Venice Biennale, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum. Williams has won numerous awards including being named one of the top 25 technology planners and Game Changer by Metropolis Magazine. Check out her latest exhibition, Visualizing NYC 2021, at the Center for Architecture in New York City.
Big data can be used for good—from tracking disease to exposing human rights violations—and for bad: implementing surveillance and control. Data inevitably represents the ideologies of those who control its use; data analytics and algorithms too often exclude women, the poor, and ethnic groups. In Data Action, Sarah Williams provides a guide for working with data in more ethical and responsible ways. Williams outlines a method that emphasizes collaboration among data scientists, policy experts, data designers, and the public. The approach generates policy debates, influences civic decisions, and informs design to help ensure that the voices of people represented in the data are neither marginalized nor left unheard.
Jörg Schröder
Professor and Chair of Territorial Design and Urban Planning; Director of the Institute of Urban Design and Planning, Leibniz Universit, Hannover
Bio
Jörg Schröder, architect and urban planner, full professor and Chair for territorial design and urban planning as well as director of the institute of urban design and planning of Leibniz University Hannover LUH in Germany. He holds a Master in architecture from Technische Universität München TUM and has been assistant professor at TUM. He focuses on urbanism and architecture for sustainable transition and territorial innovation as well as on design research, particularly regarding new metropolitan and peripheral spatial constellations, emerging creative habitats, and circular dynamics. Recent R&D projects include “Rurbance” (EU Alpine Space Programme), “Regiobranding” (BMBF), and “Creative Food Cycles” (EU Creative Europe Programme). He organised international conferences, workshops and exhibitions in Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Spain. 2010 he was invited to the exhibition in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Recent publications:
- Schröder J., Carta M., Scaffidi F., Contato, A., eds. (2021) Cosmopolitan Habitat. A research agenda for urban resilience. Berlin: Jovis. Available online.
- Schröder J., Sommariva E., Sposito S., eds. (2020) Creative Food Cycles - Book 1. Hannover: Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung, Leibniz Universität Hannover. Available online.
- Schröder, J., Carta M., Ferretti M., Lino B., eds. (2018) Dynamics of Periphery. Atlas of Emerging Creative and Resilient Habitats. Berlin: Jovis.
Climate change will turn how we understand, feel, and design cities. Cities are a main stage and a key actor to imagine and realise a resilient present and an innovative vision how we live and work together. The aim to transform Europe into the first climate-neutral continent will need inventive design for living spaces—linking technology and arts, enhancing economic and social opportunities. The initiative New European Bauhaus is a call for urbanism and architecture to link, combine, and accelerate innovation with other disciplines, other creatives, and with active citizens. This contribution is setting an urban and territorial perspective at the core of exploration and experimentation, building on potentials and chances to synthesise Dynamics of Periphery. The focus is on places where people, space, flows, and ideas interact, where new quality of life can be imagined and achieved. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we can observe a new awareness and interest in territories, outside of metropolis: for weekend flight, nearby mountains, lakes, rivers, coastlines attracted metropolitans in large numbers, becoming temporary cities; for living and working, for longer or temporarily, places outside of metropolis became a searched, promoted, and admired target. Driven by digitalisation, sustainable mobility, cultural resources, economic inventiveness, renewables, heritage, and new networks, peripheries are becoming Cosmopolitan Habitats. The contribution aims to explore this trend and to turn it into an urbanistic project: can the current rediscovery offer visions for territories in the longer run?
Organizing and Scientific Committee:
- Marcella Del Signore, Director, M.S. in Architecture, Urban and Regional Design, Associate Professor, NYIT School of Architecture and Design
- Cristiano Lepratti, Professor, University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
- Vittorio Pizzigoni, Director, Master of Architectural Composition, Associate Professor, University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
- Emanuele Sommariva, Assistant Professor, University of Genoa Department of Architecture and Design
- Jörg Schröder, Professor and Chair of Territorial Design and Urban Planning; Director of the Institute of Urban Design and Planning, Leibniz Universität, Hannover
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New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture & Design at the 17th International Architecture Biennale 2021, and the Virtual Italian Pavilion
Questions? Contact the School of Architecture & Design at archevents@nyit.edu