The workshops offer a vital testing ground for the resolution of spatial interventions with local socio-economic trends alongside embedded political contexts.

Drawing on the extensive resources of the DPU in collaboration with local partners in various host cities, DPU summerLab leverages the reality of the city as a laboratory for developing socially responsive design measures that provoke, stimulate, strategize, and reconsider the role of designers in promoting spatial justice.

The current landscape of cities is that of contested processes, interdependencies and relations which are dominated to various degrees by diverse actors with contrasting voices and agendas. These complex relations emerge from historical and material dialectics of the territory, linking diverse activities with the environment in a time-based evolving process, connecting action sequences that may happen simultaneously both locally and globally. To appropriately engage in this arena, a critical re-appraisal is required concerning a new paradigmatic shift in the culture and discipline of Architecture and Urban Design. 

DPU summerLab seeks to establish a unique rotating platform for in situ immersion and experimentation in urban environments where the boundaries of spatial agency are actively tested, hinging upon critical analysis and spatial knowledge development geared toward undergraduate and graduate students as well as emerging professionals in design and planning. The workshops offer a vital testing ground for the resolution of spatial interventions with local socio-economic trends alongside embedded political contexts.

Website

Bucharest | Fuzzy Urbanisms

23 - 28 July 2012 

with Pietro Elisei (Planum.net - Urbasofia) and Maria Duda (Spiru Haret University)

Zurich | Liminal Contours

6 - 11 August 2012

with Ben Leclair-Paquet (ETH) and Sarah Nichols (ETH)

Rome | Occupation City

10-15 September 2012

with Francesco Careri (Stalker - LAC - Roma Tre University) and Laboratorio Arti Civiche