Mark Hackett, 'Belfast trajectories – restitching the city'
Activism in the built environment a program of evening events accompanying The City is a Thinking Machine exhibition. 28 October (Wed) 6-8pm a guest lecture in the D’Arcy Thomson Lecture Theatre, followed by a round table conversation with the exhibitors in the Lamb Gallery. Mark Hackett, 'Belfast trajectories – restitching the city' Mark Hackett is a Belfast-based architect specialising in building, research and urban design. As a director in City Reparo and a founding director in Forum for Alternative Belfast, both multi-disciplinary research and advocacy groups, he has au...
Historic Patrick Geddes plans and drawings to be displayed for first time
Rarely seen work by the hugely influential Scottish planner and botanist Sir Patrick Geddes will go on show at the University of Dundee this month, some of it being placed on public display for what is thought to be the first time. “The City is a Thinking Machine – Activism in the Built Environment” marks the centenary of the publication of Geddes’ 'Cities in Evolution’ (1915) and the associated Cities Exhibitions that ran at that time. Geddes was a pioneering thinker on the design and evolution of cities. 'Cities in Evolution’ was a seminal text which promoted his Citie...
Measuring wellbeing for effective place-making
Date: 13/11/2015 Time: 10.00 – 16.00Location: Dalhousie Lecture Theatre (LT1- Ground Floor), University of Dundee Register for tickets Considerable advances around the meaning of well-being have been made in recent years, with a view to influencing national policies which value quality of life, including linkages with the physical environment and the social health of communities. However, as yet there has been little consideration of how well-being can be achieved through collaborative forms of place making. Critics suggest that place making is often more concerned with the form and physical appearan...
Nablus "an authentic urban space”
The first satellite event for The City is a Thinking Machine ... activism in the built environment exhibition took place in the Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee on Monday 19th October 2015. Mr Naseer R. Arafat, who is visiting Dundee as a guest of the Dundee-Nablus Twinning Association, gave an illustrated lecture entitled: Nablus "an authentic urban space”. Drawing on his research, planning and architectural practice in the city, Naseer reflected on design innovations in Nablus, and explained how the historic city centre of Nablus has transformed over centuries in light of changing...
Enhancing wellbeing: inclusive, community collaborative approaches to place making
Resources from the event, Report, videos, Galleries - now with final report Briefing Attitudes to well-being are beginning to change, both within government and society, with a shift away from the idea that a flourishing life is primarily connected to material prosperity towards one that positions well-being as a significant goal for public policy. This shift is being accompanied by a commitment to empower local communities, unlocking social capital and giving individuals greater voice in the processes of place making that determine the quality and direction of their lives. Together, these changes pro...
Youth Camp 2015 with Minecraft on the Waterfront
Youth Camp 2015 was a successful and engaging workshop where seven secondary schools across the TAYplan area developed hypothetical visions for what they think Dundee waterfront should look like through interactive sessions using the popular game, Minecraft. Each participating school team was given an individual plot on a model of the Dundee Waterfront (designed in Minecraft by Andrew Rennie, Conservation Officer, Perth and Kinross Council) to develop their visions of the waterfront. A central aim of the Youth Camp was to encourage young people to think differently about places they live and to help them u...
Husam Al Waer awarded Reed and Mallik Ltd journal prize
Congratulations to Husam Al Waer who has been awarded the Reed and Mallik Ltd journal prize (for the best paper in journal) for his paper ‘Improving contemporary approaches to the master planning process’ published in the journal Urban Design and Planning (Vol 167 issueDP1). Each year, ICE Publishing acknowledges the best work published in their journals at the ICE Publishing Awards ceremony. We award authors from both industry and academia who have produced work judged by their peers to be of exceptional quality and benefit to the civil engineering and science community. Each paper is free to ...
100 years of Cities in Evolution
Marking the centenary of the publication of Geddes, Cities in Evolution Exhibition & Workshops The Scottish polymathic planner and botanist, Patrick Geddes, was able to articulate conceptual frameworks for the evolution of cities – what he called ‘thinking machines’ – and create resilient narratives for understanding the dialogues between the on-going processes of city evolution and democratic social organisation. This program of research workshops culminating in a symposium and public exhibition of work drawn from the Geddes archives, evaluates the relevance of Geddes to contem...
Dundee Conservation Lectures in their 21st year
Classical Revival in 18th Century Architecture Murray Grigor OBE & Peter Burman 6 pm D'Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre, Tower Building The 21st season of the Dundee Conservation Lectures continues on 24th March. Murray Grigor OBE is the probably greatest Scottish exponent of architecture and design through fi lm and his celebrated fi rst fi lm, Mackintosh, 1968, rekindled interest in the then neglected architect. He has since gone on to make over 50 fi lms with a focus on arts and architecture (most recently 'Beatus: the Spanish Apocalypse', 2014). 'The Hand of Adam' ...
Mono 68 Photography & Memory event
Mono 68: One city, One month, One camera Photographs by Phil Thomson, Dundee, November 1968 Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee Friday 6 March at 6pm Photography and Memory – a series of short talks followed by a discussion exploring the role of photography in capturing Dundee and other cities, and how our memories and our ideas about architecture are shaped by photographic images. The event will start in the Lamb Gallery with an introduction by Caroline Brown (Deputy Archivist at the University of Dundee). We will then move into Baxter Suite Room 1.36 for four presentations: Journali...