Th 05 Nov 09

Open City Lecture and Debate – Mark Shepard

Lecture by media architect and researcher Mark Shepard within the context of the Open City Event Program of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Shepard studies the influence of new media and network technologies on architecture and the city. The theme of the lecture is Connectivity.

From the real-time city to read/write urbanism: on the architecture of contemporary urban topographies

Cities today are complex hybrids of both physical and informational space. Brought into being through common everyday techno-social practices, these hybrids rely on a wide range of networked media, information and communications systems that continually make and remake the spatial conditions of urban life. Take for example the pervasiveness of mobile phones capable of not just synchronic voice communications but also asynchronic data transactions – text messaging, web browsing, photo sharing, to name just a few. These mobile computing devices have introduced new ways by which we connect with each other and interact with and within our shared urban environment.

This lecture will present a survey of recent work in urban computing, ambient informatics and locative media, and examine its implications for architecture and urbanism. How is our experience of the city and the choices we make there transformed by these new spatial practices? How do they reconfigure traditional urban relationships between privacy and publicity within urban public space? To what extent can we deploy them toward a form of open and participatory space-making within these new and emerging urban topographies? How do we – as architects and urban planners – begin to think about our role in shaping the immaterial architecture of software infrastructures and influencing their performance or enactment of new urban organizations and spatial experiences that are diverse, sustainable and dynamic?

www.themobilecity.nl/connectivityiabr

+31 (0) 10 440 1342 / www.nai.nl/inschrijven
Auditorium, NAI
8:00 p.m.
€ 5 /3 / PP
in English