dpu Palermo summerLab: Emergent Migrant Topographies

Limited places remain for the sixth year of the Development Planning Unit's summerLab series - a unique platform for one-week design workshops in contested spaces, with sessions geared toward professionals and students with an interest in studying the built environment and its contested narratives of transformation.

Organised in collaboration with urbanita and Push, the Palermo workshop focuses on the city's strategic role within the Mediterranean and European context. It has social and economic relations with the African continent and the Middle-East countries and reminiscence of its history as city conquered and dominated by various cultures, populations and religions, from Phoenicians to Carthaginians, from Romans to Arabs. Its Greek name, 'Panormos', can be literally translated as 'all port': Palermo has always been a fundamental commercial exchange junction, and acquired strong inter-cultural features which are still present nowadays and strongly identify and characterise it. Its urban historical centre, with its incredible architectural heritage, is suspended in a general sense of decadence, recently exacerbated by the European financial crisis, and the increasing influx of migrants and refugees.

Participants will work along with urbanita and Push mapping out the actual migrant urbanisms in the historical centre of Palermo while unveiling cases of emergent people-led activities - and questioning to what extent these manage to involve and empower newcomers.

Further links:

• Apply for the Palermo summerLab