Events
08/09-8/22/09
Designing China
This Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT) is an intensive two-week summer program offered by the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). SECT convenes distinguished instructors with a group of approximately 60 faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, and public intellectuals from across the international community. The hallmark of SECT is its attention to both ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ modes of contemporary critical theory.
04/30-5/1/09
Emerging Exchanges: New Architectures of India
Presented by The Architectural League of New York,
India China Institute of The New School,
Parsons The New School for Design
Theresa Lang Student Center, The New School,
55 West 13th Street
04/21/09
Visualization as Ethnographic Method
A workshop with Robert Pietrusko
moderated by Vyjayanthi Rao
6:30 to 8:30pm
2 W. 13th Street, 10th Floor Lab
03/10/09
Global Flows & Climate Change
Presentation and panel discussion
with Interdisciplinary firms SPURSE
and LA FANTASTICA
6:30 to 8:30pm
2 W. 13th Street, 10th Floor Lab
11/13/08
Expanding Architecture: Conversations on Design as Activism
Metropolis Magazine - Event Website
Thursday, 11/13/2008, 6:00 pm—8:45 pm
Expanding Architecture: Conversations on Design as Activism
Location: Steelcase, Inc. 4 Columbus Circle, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10019
Join Metropolis magazine and Steelcase as they bring together designers, essayists, developers, educators, manufacturers and policy makers to focus on Expanding Architecture.
10/16,17,18/08
Hong Kong New York: Vertical Density Sustainable Solutions
Symposium Website
In conjunction with the Vertical Cities: Hong Kong | New York exhibition, The Skyscraper Museum has organized an international symposium examining the dramatic vertical urbanism of Hong Kong and exploring comparisons with New York City. Three separate programs will be held in partnership with The Regional Plan Association, The New School’s India China Institute and The Tishman Environment and Design Center. Video Podcast of Brian McGrath’ talk: “After Hong Kong”
2/25/08
Design, Social Change and Social Science: Catalyzing Interactions
Theresa Lang Center, The New School
‘Participatory’ design practices have become increasingly popular just as participatory methods have become the methodological staple for development projects and funding agencies across the world. Positioning the participatory design process as one among several methods for engaging democratic impulses, we wish to explore the possibilities for new research methodologies that can enable communication across disciplines and contexts. In particular, we are interested in exploring the uneasy relationship of contemporary social science to intervention and normative positions, while at the same time engaging with speculative and contingent research and design methods that many designers now actively pursue. Relevant themes for discussion include: the role of media design in catalyzing public engagement; the role of contemporary social science reflections in expanding understandings of community and ideas of the public as components of development and design processes; and finally, the increasing burden placed on design professionals to respond to highly speculative and contingent conditions under which the planning of urban futures now takes place. This day-long seminar explores the relationship between design, social change and social science asking how we might create more robust interfaces between the critical reflections of contemporary social sciences and the desires for social change on the part of activists, designers and social theorists.
Conference Poster
Panel Descriptions
2/15/08
Shenzhen: On and Beyond China’s Fastest Growing City
Wolff Conference Room, The New School
Like no other city, Shenzhen embodies China’s massive transformation over the last three decades. Designated as China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen grew from a handful of rural villages to a dynamic city of over twelve million people in little over a generation. This breathless urban explosion is an experiment in the production and ordering of global excess, a laboratory for market transformation and social control, a site for futuristic urban design, and above all a collective process of creation. This series of events presents a visual and scholarly investigation into the texture of this city and the anxious landscapes engendered by globalization. Panels, films, and exhibits range from Shenzhen’s business core to its artistic fringe, with a special focus on the built environment, designing for civic engagement and the social phenomenon of urban villages.
10/08/07
MAKE: A Studio-Based Research Symposium
Parsons, The New School
MAKE: A Studio-Based Research Symposium brings together faculty from The New School and colleagues from academic institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom. The event will include presentations of case studies framed by moderated discussions that address the value of speculative inquiry within a professional creative practice, as well as the potential of collaboration between design and the social sciences.
Among the speakers are Colleen Macklin, chair of Communication Design and Technology at Parsons, and Vyjayanthi Rao, assistant professor of anthropology at The New School for Social Research, who will discuss their collaborative work. This includes a course they are teaching jointly this fall, Design and Ethnography, in which Parsons and NSSR students explore the intersection of design and anthropological practices. Other speakers are David Lewis, associate professor in the Architecture, Interior Design and Lighting Program at Parsons, who will discuss research conducted within his architectural practice, the award-winning firm of Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis; Sean Donohue, a principal of ResearchCenteredDesign in Los Angeles; and Mike Michael, the Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Events
08/09-8/22/09
Designing China
This Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT) is an intensive two-week summer program offered by the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). SECT convenes distinguished instructors with a group of approximately 60 faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, and public intellectuals from across the international community. The hallmark of SECT is its attention to both ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ modes of contemporary critical theory.
04/30-5/1/09
Emerging Exchanges: New Architectures of India
Presented by The Architectural League of New York,
India China Institute of The New School,
Parsons The New School for Design
Theresa Lang Student Center, The New School,
55 West 13th Street
04/21/09
Visualization as Ethnographic Method
A workshop with Robert Pietrusko
moderated by Vyjayanthi Rao
6:30 to 8:30pm
2 W. 13th Street, 10th Floor Lab
03/10/09
Global Flows & Climate Change
Presentation and panel discussion
with Interdisciplinary firms SPURSE
and LA FANTASTICA
6:30 to 8:30pm
2 W. 13th Street, 10th Floor Lab
11/13/08
Expanding Architecture: Conversations on Design as Activism
Metropolis Magazine - Event Website
Thursday, 11/13/2008, 6:00 pm—8:45 pm
Expanding Architecture: Conversations on Design as Activism
Location: Steelcase, Inc. 4 Columbus Circle, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10019
Join Metropolis magazine and Steelcase as they bring together designers, essayists, developers, educators, manufacturers and policy makers to focus on Expanding Architecture.
10/16,17,18/08
Hong Kong New York: Vertical Density Sustainable Solutions
Symposium Website
In conjunction with the Vertical Cities: Hong Kong | New York exhibition, The Skyscraper Museum has organized an international symposium examining the dramatic vertical urbanism of Hong Kong and exploring comparisons with New York City. Three separate programs will be held in partnership with The Regional Plan Association, The New School’s India China Institute and The Tishman Environment and Design Center. Video Podcast of Brian McGrath’ talk: “After Hong Kong”
2/25/08
Design, Social Change and Social Science: Catalyzing Interactions
Theresa Lang Center, The New School
‘Participatory’ design practices have become increasingly popular just as participatory methods have become the methodological staple for development projects and funding agencies across the world. Positioning the participatory design process as one among several methods for engaging democratic impulses, we wish to explore the possibilities for new research methodologies that can enable communication across disciplines and contexts. In particular, we are interested in exploring the uneasy relationship of contemporary social science to intervention and normative positions, while at the same time engaging with speculative and contingent research and design methods that many designers now actively pursue. Relevant themes for discussion include: the role of media design in catalyzing public engagement; the role of contemporary social science reflections in expanding understandings of community and ideas of the public as components of development and design processes; and finally, the increasing burden placed on design professionals to respond to highly speculative and contingent conditions under which the planning of urban futures now takes place. This day-long seminar explores the relationship between design, social change and social science asking how we might create more robust interfaces between the critical reflections of contemporary social sciences and the desires for social change on the part of activists, designers and social theorists.
Conference Poster
Panel Descriptions
2/15/08
Shenzhen: On and Beyond China’s Fastest Growing City
Wolff Conference Room, The New School
Like no other city, Shenzhen embodies China’s massive transformation over the last three decades. Designated as China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen grew from a handful of rural villages to a dynamic city of over twelve million people in little over a generation. This breathless urban explosion is an experiment in the production and ordering of global excess, a laboratory for market transformation and social control, a site for futuristic urban design, and above all a collective process of creation. This series of events presents a visual and scholarly investigation into the texture of this city and the anxious landscapes engendered by globalization. Panels, films, and exhibits range from Shenzhen’s business core to its artistic fringe, with a special focus on the built environment, designing for civic engagement and the social phenomenon of urban villages.
10/08/07
MAKE: A Studio-Based Research Symposium
Parsons, The New School
MAKE: A Studio-Based Research Symposium brings together faculty from The New School and colleagues from academic institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom. The event will include presentations of case studies framed by moderated discussions that address the value of speculative inquiry within a professional creative practice, as well as the potential of collaboration between design and the social sciences.
Among the speakers are Colleen Macklin, chair of Communication Design and Technology at Parsons, and Vyjayanthi Rao, assistant professor of anthropology at The New School for Social Research, who will discuss their collaborative work. This includes a course they are teaching jointly this fall, Design and Ethnography, in which Parsons and NSSR students explore the intersection of design and anthropological practices. Other speakers are David Lewis, associate professor in the Architecture, Interior Design and Lighting Program at Parsons, who will discuss research conducted within his architectural practice, the award-winning firm of Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis; Sean Donohue, a principal of ResearchCenteredDesign in Los Angeles; and Mike Michael, the Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, University of London.
