The roundtable is entitled “Practicing in East Asia: Challenges, Idiosyncrasies, and Discoveries.” It will bring together professional architects and academics to discuss the social, political, geographical, and cultural challenges of working in East Asia. The workshop will be held from 9 am to noon on Wednesday, September 15, in the Pence Hall auditorium on UK’s campus.

Following the roundtable, a symposium entitled “East Asia: Experiments in Architecture and Urbanism” will be held on September 24 & 25, 2004, in UK’s Student Center. The symposium is expected to attract several hundred participants from UK and across the nation. It will consist of three topic sessions focusing on historic preservation, interior design, and architecture and urbanism. Each session will focus on three papers by internationally-known specialists in these fields, with comments by invited scholars from the U.S. and abroad. Topics to be addressed include approaches to historic preservation in East Asian urban environments over the past 150 years, the consequences of hyper-development from both private and public institutions on the shape of cities in East Asia, and how practices specific to particular cultures – in this case the cultures of East Asia – influence the design of space and place, and the conceptualization of scale and form.

The keynote address, presented by Professor Ackbar Abbas, distinguished Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong, is co-sponsored by the ideaFestival and the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Abbas is the author of an influential study of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a city administered by the People’s Republic of China.

For the symposium schedule and more information, please see the web site of the College of Design (www.uky.edu/Design) or contact the co-organizers. Joseph P. Ferrucci, College of Design (859) 257-9415 Kristin Stapleton, Asia Center (859) 257-1357