NEWS | CONFERENCES

05:02 CONFERENCE: " Future of London " festival at the Museum of London,
The Future Cities Project
February 16th 2005 . www.futurecities.org.uk/events.htm

Speakers include:
- Simon Allford, Munira Mirza, Michael Owens, Jules Lubbock
- Ken Powell, Tom Dyckhoff, Hugh Pearman, Penny Lewis
- Iain Borden, Julia Thrift, Pauline Hadaway, Andres Luque, Sandy Starr,
- Massimiliano Fuksas, Amanda Levete, Madeleine Holt
- Roger Madelin, Sir Terry Farrell, Christian Wolmar
- Prof. Marcial Echenique, Tom Oliver, Stuart Waiton, Dolan Cummings
- Alain de Botton, Dickon Robinson, Bill Dunster, Nicholas Sharman

A one-day conference to be held at the London School of Economics,
Old Building, Houghton Street, London WC2
Saturday, December 6th 2003

Tickets: £12 and £8

This is quite an ambitious conference exploring what our future-vision is today - a period when the future is viewed with some trepidation. The closing session will assess whether we've lost our vision or have become more sensible in our aspirations.

Speakers include:
Laurie Taylor (broadcaster); Miranda Sawyer (BBC Late Review and author 'Park & Ride'); Peter York (management consultant); Claire Fox (Institute of Ideas); Jonathan Glancey (architecture critic, The Guardian); Tom Heap (BBC Rural Affairs correspondent); Dr Henry J McCracken (Paris Observatory); Timandra Harkness (script writer); Dea Birkett (author and travel writer); Sean Topham (author 'Where's My Space Age'); Penny Lewis (Prospect magazine); Phil Mullan (author 'The Imaginary Timebomb); David Ashford (author 'Spaceflight Revolution', Bristol Spaceplanes); Peter Cook (founder, Archigram); Daniel Ben-Ami (author 'Cowardly Capitalism); Austin Williams (Technical Editor, Architects' Journal); Vicky Richardson (author, 'New Vernacular Architecture'); Julian Morris (director, International Policy Network); Greg Klerkx (science writer, former senior manager, SETI institute); Marina Benjamin (author, 'Rocket Dreams'); Kevin McCullagh (director, Foresight, Seymour Powell); Professor Tim Dyson (head of Population and Development, LSE); Ceri Dingle (director, WORLDwrite); Kim Newman (novelist and critic); Gordon McGranahan (director Human Settlements Programme, IIED); Victoria Nash (senior researcher, IPPR, author 'Making Sense of Communities'); Dr Graham Barnfield (lecturer in journalism and print media); Peter Smith (lecturer, Travel & Tourism); Martin Wright (editor, 'Green Futures'); Joe Kerr (Head of Dept of Critical and Historical Studies, Royal College of Art); Terence Bendixson (President, Pedestrians' Association); Xan Brooks (editor, Guardian Film Unlimited); Sandy Starr (technology editor, spiked) ...
For more information on booking, contact: mail@transportresearch.org.uk

XXI World Congressof Architecture
UIA Berlin 2002 19-30 July

"The Theme: Resource Architecture
For the first time in its history, the World Congress of Architecture, in conjunction with the UIA General Assembly, is taking place in Germany in the year 2002. This Congress, whose general theme is "Resource Architecture", is organised by the International Union of Architects UIA and the Association of German Architects BDA, the national UIA section of Germany.

The terms "resource" and "architecture" carry several meanings:

Architecture as the art of building and as a valuable resource
The revaluation of city centres and faceless suburbs
New construction in the urban context
The transformation and continuous development of city and society
The modernisation of old buildings and the preservation of historical monuments
Innovative building technologies to save natural resources
Cyclical economies in planning and building construction

To preserve what is valuable and to shape the future is the original task of the planning professions; this task will be crucially determined by the consequences of social change and the transformations in our globalised work environment.

Apart from natural resources, architecture is one of civilisation's most precious goods in an increasingly urbanised universe. Our built environment may be the product of technological, political, economic and socio-cultural processes; its physical qualities are the resource of our life. It is the great task of architecture in the 21st century to preserve and develop these resources.

Thus, developing strategies for sustainable building will be as important as the design of cities and rural space as places of housing and living. The preservation and modernisation of existing structures has to go together with the invention and continuous development of building forms that face present and future challenges.

These tasks can only be approached in an interdisciplinary framework; moreover, they imply higher standards for the training and continuing education of architects, whose professional image will undergo profound changes in the next years."