links for 2009-06-19

"It is crucial to analyse cities holistically as ensembles of technologies, infrastructures, buildings, institutions and the actors who design, manage and inhabit them as no single discipline can effectively tackle the enormous challenges cities currently face. The emerging field of socio-technical studies of architecture and urbanism is well equipped for such a task. However, as Moore and Karvonen observe, "there has been little emphasis in STS scholarship to date on the design of the built environment" (2008, 29). This workshop provides much-needed coordination between scholars in this field and an opportunity to develop an active research strategy that avoids redundancies and identifies potentials for synergies and future collaborations."

5-6 November, Maastricht

New blog, more focused on sites than people and systems:

"Veg.itecture is a spin-off site from Landscape+Urbanism, focusing on the representation and implementation of green roofs, living walls, and vertical farming from around the world."

official website for the Green Engines workshop in Barcelona this summer

Ecosistemaurbano reports on a summer workshop in Barcelona with the evocative title of "green engines":

"Urban parks can be the future green engines of a self-sufficient urban environment. A productive landscape merges nature for pleasant city escape, with a resource-efficient milieu. The implementation of sustainable ecosystems of community self-organization into new strategic planning, integrates community supported urban farming, with the production of renewable energies, water purification and waste management. This productive landscape strengthens personal and community responsibility, it is a platform for individual creativity, and social organization. The workshop searches how urban and landscape design may establish the main catalyst strategies for the generation of a self-sustained green space. ... The workshop evaluates how a community self-organized productive landscape can embrace existing historical sites, bringing into dialogue different landscape design approaches."