UCL Urban Laboratory

Each summer the DPU summerLab hosts a workshop series in cities around the world – seeking to stimulate and provoke a reconsideration of the role of designers in promoting spatial justice. Now, the 2014 series pamphlet is available online. You can download the document (pdf) for free or read the document on issuu.

Global Urban Higher Education: the challenges and potentials of internationalisation

Urban Lab+ London Symposium, 16-17 September 2015 

Context
With a shortfall of 100,000 units per year and a decline in the availability of social tenancies, London's developers and housing associations add to the already considerable cost of housing by charging for the service of organising groups of people with the common need of accommodation. Those in need are often forced to accept precarious dwelling conditions, in buildings that are poorly designed, cheaply constructed and disadvantageously financed. The political and financial structures, such as the mis-alignment of average wages to the GLA’s interpretations of ‘affordability’ and predominance of insecure tenancies, that fuel London’s housing crisis continue to evolve beneath the radar of public scrutiny.

Action
We are convening a workshop concerned to scope communication technologies with potential to disrupt these conditions. This workshop is concerned with the design of network-based tools that would nurture a many-to-many approach to 1) better understanding and engagement with policy changes and relevant expertise; 2) experimenting with alternative models that destabalise the central role of the developer / housing association in decision making about the future of housing in London.

Outcome
The outcome of this workshop will be a special issue of the Urban Pamphleteer. Our starting vision for this is a catalogue of transformative tools, tactics, and ideas from a variety of perspectives featuring contributions by select workshop participants. Urban Pamphleteer is a series of publications that confront key contemporary urban questions from diverse perspectives. Issues are distributed for free in print and digitally. Urban Pamphleteer is a collaboration between Central Saint Martins and the UCL Urban Laboratory.

Participate
The workshop takes place on 13 March 2015 (10.00-16.30) at Central Saint Martins in the Graphic Communication Design studios and runs as part of CSM's Restless Futures Events Series. Confirmed participants so far include Joel Gethin Lewis, Adam Greenfield, and Dawn Foster. Lunch and refreshments will be provided, but please note that we are unable to cover additional costs.

We would like to hear from anyone who thinks they might have a contribution to make to this workshop. If you are interested, please send an e-mail to Shauna Scott (s.scott@csm.arts.ac.uk) and include a 100 word expression of interest that indicates something about your background and reason for wanting to get involved by 16 February. We will select approximately 18 participants representing a wide range of concerns and disciplines. We want this discussion to be highly interdisciplinary and we encourage participation from a wide range of fields, professions and community groups.

Thank you.

Rebecca Ross, Shumi Bose, Shauna Scott & Ben Campkin

London is Changing is a research project studying the impact of economic and policy changes on the culture and diversity of London.

UCL Urban Laboratory is partnering with Somerset House and A(by)P to support the Mapping the City exhibition and events programme, opening on Thursday 22 January.

In her carefully crafted introduction to the book London: Aspects of Change in 1964, the urban sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term ‘gentrification’. The term, referring to demographic shifts within an urban community, subsequently spawned an extensive and ever-growing field of urban research and debate.

Athlyn Cathcart-Keays writes for The Guardian on the debate over urban graffiti, drawing on the recent Graffiti Sessions conference co-hosted by the UCL Urban Laboratory.

Max Colson, Urban Laboratory Artist-in-Residence 2014-15, has launched a new research blog, Photo Recall, complementing his residency.

Publication date: December 2014 / Download (pdf) report by clicking on the icon below.

This new report covers the activities of the UCL Urban Laboratory across the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years, with information on research, events, and staff.

Urban Lab Co-director Camillo Boano discusses the legacy of the urban theorist and planner Bernardo Secchi, who passed away in September 2014, in Society and Space.

The Guardian report from the recent Graffiti Sessions conference hosted by Urban Lab and the Graffiti Dialogues Network at Central Saint Martins, with an article highlighting DC Colin Saysell's presentation on the first day.

Dr Andrew Harris writes in The Guardian that Mumbai's transport policy continues to be skewed towards cars despite 91% of trips in the city being made on foot, or public transport. The article appears as part of the Guardian Cities Mumbai series.

Matthew Gandy's new book The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination has just been published by MIT Press.

Clare Melhuish (Urban Lab Research Associate) joins forces with Kim Townsend, UCL's Public Engagement Co-Ordinator (East), Andy Karvonen, Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Manchester, and Sam Wilkinson, Director of InSite Arts, to run a workshop at the Engage 2014 conference in Bristol on Wednesday 3 December, from 2-3pm.

Today marks the launch of an exciting new Guardian Cities series on urban images authored by Ben Campkin (UCL), Mariana Mogilevich (Princeton) and Rebecca Ross (Central Saint Martins).

Graffiti Sessions is a three day event that welcomes authorities, academics, policy makers, artists, writers, community members and urban managers to come together in order to question value, creativity and control in relation to street art and graffiti.

The potential role of higher education in ‘activating’ city centres all over the world, as opposed to generating conflict between ‘town and gown’, was highlighted at the launch on Sunday of UCL Urban Laboratory’s Urban Pamphleteer #4, dedicated to issues around the rapid redevelopment of the historic centre of Doha, Qatar. The event, held at Doha’s most recognizable landmark, the Museum of Islamic Art, concluded with a presentation from Tim Makower, a British architect based in London and Doha, who stated ‘there is a real opportunity for higher education to activate old Doha. Experience tells us that urban mixed use, cultural heritage, and education are mutually beneficial’.

The third edition of the Urban Pamphleteer has launched and is now available to download as a pdf.

Amit Chaudhuri will host a lecture at UCL to mark the Department of English's City Centre joining the Urban Lab's Cities Imaginaries programme.

We are pleased to announce the programme of events for Cities Methodologies 2014. Led by UCL Urban Laboratory, Cities Methodologies is an ongoing programme of events and exhibitions dedicated to presenting, sharing and experimenting with new methods of urban research. Click on the image to view the programme (pdf).

UCL Urban Laboratory’s annual exhibition exploring innovative urban research returns 28th-31st October. After a record number of applicants for the open call in June, we are pleased to announce the list of artists, academics, students, independent researchers and groups who will take part in the exhibition and associated programme of events.

UCL Urban Laboratory is delighted to announce that UCL has received an award from the Leverhulme Trust to fund artist Max Colson as an artist-in-residence to work with Dr Ben Campkin during the academic year 2014/15.

As part of the spring programme of Cities Methodologies in 2014, 'Buildings on Fire: Towards a new approach to urban memory' brought together a range of fire specialists, researchers, architects, curators and artists to explore the notion of fire as a methodological tool. The cross-disciplinary seminar featured a number of talks, of which three have been recorded. The audio is accessible below and on the UCL Urban Laboratory Mixcloud page.

As part of the spring programme of Cities Methodologies in 2014, the 'Learning to Walk' roundtable brought together a range of thinkers, practicioners, and artists who are engaged with walking as a method of understanding, and a way of experiencing, the city. The discussion focuses on the diversity of walks-based practices and different approaches for thinking about walking. The audio is accessible below and on the UCL Urban Laboratory Mixcloud page.

UCL Urban Laboratory has been awarded a Beacon Bursary in the latest round of UCL’s public engagement grants. It will be used for the project, ‘Making sense of digital data’ - inclusive visualisation workshops as a component of participatory urban regeneration in Brixton. Research Associate Clare Melhuish will work with colleagues in ICRI Cities at UCL (Han Pham, Christian Jetter, and Lisa Koeman), and the Brixton Green community benefit society, to organise two inclusive workshops for local residents at Somerleyton Road, Brixton.