SKuOR lecture: The Sense of Place and Flexibility in Urban Planning

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space would like to invite you to attend the 2nd event of the SKuOR evening lecture series 2010.

DI Aglaée Degros (City of Vienna Visiting Professor 2010 - Junior) will talk about

The Sense of Place and Flexibility in Urban Planning within the SKuOR learning field of spatial planning (know how).

Venue: Zemanek-Saal [Favoritenstr. 9-11, A 1040 Vienna, light green area, section 3, ground floor]

Abstract
In the planning and designing of many complex urban conditions, we encounter a lack of flexibility regarding the tools we can use. This applies especially to those conditions where infrastructure and cities conflict with one another, where there are many different actors and fluctuating economic and societal issues are involved. The reference tool used (nowadays) to define a project and pass it on to the relevant decision-making authorities is the master plan: a planning tool based on a more top-down approach, going from the general to the specific. This lecture reconsiders the master plan in the context of planning processes that demand more flexibility and a discerning sense of place, going from the specific to the general.

About
Coming from the field of architecture and urbanism, Aglaée Degros is cofounder and partner of Artgineering. Artgineering is an office for research and design at the interface between urban planning and infrastructure. The office devises and implements strategies for complex (inter)urban areas, with particular focus on the role of infrastructure and traffic. In different types of projects Artgineering reinterprets the relation between infrastructure, landscape and urban development. Starting with precise observation of the existing territorial realities, the office moves between the spatial, social and cultural production of space, also addressing the communication and anchoring of the designs through innovative participatory processes. In practice and theory, the partners Aglaee Degros and Stefan Bendiks have devoted themselves to both experimentation and a renewal of the tools of the urban planning discipline. This is fostered through a holistic approach in which creativity and technology come together: art-gineering. The work of Artgineering was subject matter of several publications, exhibitions and was awarded various prizes. Aglaée Degros has been doing teaching and research in the field of urban planning and architecture at various institutes such as TU Delft and Arnhem Academy of Architecture.