Panel: Urban Spaces and Private Quarters
In this panel the focus lies on spatial relations and the city both as object of and as the location for scientific scrutiny. Perceptions of symbolic and material artifacts in the city guide the everyday life of a majority of the world's contemporary population. The tacit power of architecture, the subtle influences of the aesthetics of things are constantly reconfigured by the practices of the people moving through and using urban spaces. However, built space is not the only hub of this panel. The staging of events in the city by different actors and the conflicting uses of publically accessible spaces directs our interest to presentations and representations of the city and its diverse inhabitants. This area of inquiry connects discursive with visual and performative aspects of urban life. Finally, we are interested in the multiple ways in which the modeling and visualization of urban space in architectural design influences the development and the decision making processes that eventually solidify into concrete buildings, plazas, and parks. Regarding all three of these hubs we want to encourage presentations that explicitly deal with the ambivalent or dialectic character of aesthetics in the cities. Touristic interests produce sites that are intended to attract people, their time, their money and their attention. These sites become places of a specific cultural and economic significance. At the same time other places are produced and presented as repellent - the "no-go areas" of the modern ghetto, ethnic neighborhoods, and the hidden or gated communities of the rich and powerful. Aestetics are a central component of the processes of attraction and exclusion that regulate our everyday practices. We are particularly interested in presentations that include photographic, acoustic or audio-visual components. The presentetations should be tied to empirical phenomena.

Abstracts from a wide variety of disciplines are welcome. These include history, sociology, philosophy, economics, engineering and art history. Submit 500-word abstracts by Mai 15, 2005, as a Word or RichText document to:

Lars Frers/Lars Meier
TU Darmstadt
Fachbereich 2
Post-Graduate College “Technology and Society”
Karolinenplatz 5 (Fach 1404)
64289 Darmstadt
Germany

e-mail address follows.