CALL: Inaugural Lecture, Speculating on Change
The inaugural lecture on “Speculating on Change” was delivered by Michael A. Cohen, Director, The Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School on October 16, 2009. Cohen discussed cities both as sites of the greatest impacts of global change, but also as sites providing solutions to some of the challenges that result from such change. Four specific “paradoxes” – dealing with issues of economy, geography, politics, and sustainability – provided entries to a discussion of cities as both spaces of hope and sites of vulnerability.

RESPONSE: William Morrish
The response is offered by William Morrish, Dean of the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons The New School for Design. Trained as an architect, Morrish comes to Parsons from the University of Virginia School of Architecture, where he taught and led research in the areas of sustainable urban infrastructure, new housing models, and global urbanization and climate change. In that role, he focused on interdisciplinary work addressing what he calls the “second generation of sustainability”: the design of cultural ecologies. He is a nationally recognized urban designer whose practice encompasses inter-disciplinary research on urban housing and infrastructure, collaborative publications on human settlement and community design, and educational programs exploring integrated design, which are applied to a wide range of innovative community-based city projects.

Michael Cohen’s lecture focused on the discrepancy between emerging ideas on sustainable urban development and the realities of implementing them on the ground, in the growing global city. The four points of his lecture identify the reasons that capacity cannot be delivered, namely the lack of adequate research, tools and models. His lecture points to the disturbing fact that most of our urban development skills are based on outdated concepts that identify master plans and large projects as the cure for urban ills. Cohen began to sketch the challenge faced when transferring stimuli for change from to the top to a middle zone, where local economic, social and ecological activities can aggregate into more sustainable urban networks of support. The sobering conclusion of his lecture was that we have little time to change practice and behavior. As the polar ice caps melt, cities are being flooded with new social, cultural and environment realities.

Yet within this maelstrom of global urban change, communities such as Bogotá, Columbia, and Rosaria, Argentina, are overhauling the old the rules of planning, governance and management procedures. Civic leaders and neighborhood activists are learning how to turn the principles of sustainable development into new models of integrated design, inclusive operations, and regenerative practices. These transformations focus on the mid-size scale of the cities and combine it with basic everyday economic and social transactions, for instance by expanding mobility options, connecting micro-business networks, and designing open and transparent civic facilities as cultural centers.

Posted on December 2, 2009

Refuting all notions of serious scholarship, Mitrasinovic and Kuoni tackle three big ideas–time, place and word–in little over an hour’s time. From their respective fields of architecture and urbanism (Mitrasinovic) and art and politics (Kuoni), each presents three case studies for the audience’s delight and their counterpart’s contemplation. The quick exchange will present examples of interdisciplinary practices that take into account current ideas about public space and social engagement.

Miodrag Mitrasinovic is an architect, author and Associate Professor at The School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design, where he currently serves as Dean and was previously the Chair of Urban and Transdisciplinary Design. His professional and scholarly work has been published internationally, including the Journal of Architecture and Building Science of the Architectural Institute of Japan, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and Metropolis. He is the author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Ashgate 2006), and co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate 2009).

Carin Kuoni is director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. From 1998 to 2003, she was director of exhibitions at Independent Curators International (iCI), and from 1992 to 1997 director of The Swiss Institute. An independent curator and art critic, Kuoni has curated many exhibitions of contemporary international art including “The Puppet Show” (co-curated with Ingrid Schaffner, 2008) and “OURS: Democracy in the Age of Branding,” presented at Parsons The New School for Design in 2009.

Presented as part of “Streaming Culture / Art & Politics,” a new interdivisional initiative organized by Victoria Vesna, Visiting Professor (UCLA) and Director of Research, School of Art, Media & Technology, Parsons The New School of Design, in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

About Streaming Culture / Art & Politics
The New School comprises eight different schools with hundreds of programs in the visual and performing arts, design, the humanities, public policy, and the social sciences. This lecture series pairs faculty from the various schools and their guests, to discuss some of the pressing issues facing their fields, and to explore common grounds between aesthetic and political practices. Hailing from all New School divisions, the speakers will inspire students, colleagues and the public to connect across disciplines.

If you are not able to join us in person, log on to The New School’s Ustream channel.

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”

Posted on October 21, 2009