A critical analysis of urban regeneration programmes in Europe

Urban regeneration is informed and driven by the causes and effects of globalization, climate change, the global economic crisis, and lifestyle changes. In Europe, there is currently a pressing demand to redevelop brownfields areas, inner-city heritage sites, post-conflict and post-disaster areas, and large-housing estates. Housing regeneration strategies range from large-scale to micro-scale interventions that lead to a complete change to the physical features of neighbourhoods and the life of their residents. This paper presents activities and cases studied in the OIKONET Erasmus Lifelong Learning Project, by highlighting that regeneration is an important issue driving the production of contemporary housing in Europe. The presented review is part of wider research and pedagogical work aimed at identifying significant conceptual, contextual and policy changes affecting housing regeneration demand. Examples of urban regeneration programmes on different urban areas in selected European countries, i.e. the UK, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and Russia are examined. As a result of the comparison between the cases analysed, some conclusions can be drawn to inform future research and set up pedagogical programmes to be carried out within the OIKONET project

University planning and design under confucianism, colonialism, communism and capitalism : the Vietnamese experience

The university in Vietnam represents a thread of continuity that has managed to survive the political, economic and social turmoil faced so frequently by the Vietnamese people. This paper traces the evolution of the Vietnamese university in terms of its site planning and building design from the Hanoi Van Mieu, a Confucian \u27temple of literature\u27 which, built in 1070AD, is regarded as the country\u27s first university, to today&rsquo;s system of general and specialised universities and polytechnic institutions. In the late 1990s another step in the process of evolution began with the rationalization and amalgamation of the tertiary system to form two large, multi-campus and multi-disciplinary universities &ndash; the Hanoi National University and the Ho Chi Minh National University.<br /

The City-Place as a Work of Art. Introduction

In this paper I will attempt to look at the city-place as a work of art. Such an approach will allow us to take into consideration its aesthetic, sensual and reflective qualities and, at the same time, contemplate those aspects which go beyond the philosophy of art, such as practical needs of everyday life. I analyze the opinions expressed by Olsen, Christie Boyer and the architects, Le Corbusier and Kevin Lynch. The positive view of the place emphasizes the role played by its shape and layout, by the sense of security and beauty, by harmony, sensuality and emotions, and by the sense of belonging and identity. The city, however, also means ruins, abandoned places invisible to its inhabitants. I examine an approach adopted by Urban Explorer and underline the aesthetic and artistic way of depicting the city. In the final part I discuss the spatial-temporal dimensions/indicators of the city as a work of art

Performing public credit at the eighteenth-century Bank of England

Much is known about the negotiation of personal credit relationships during the eighteenth century. It has been noted how direct contact and observation allowed individuals to assess the creditworthiness of those with whom they had financial connections and to whom they might lend money. Much less is known about one of the most important credit relationships of the long eighteenth century: that between the state and its creditors. This article shows that investors could experience the performance of public credit at the Bank of England. By 1760 the Bank was the manager of nearly three-quarters of the state's debt and housed the main secondary market in that debt. Thus, it provided a place for public creditors, both current and potential, to attend and scrutinize the performance of the state's promises. The article demonstrates how the Bank acted to embody public credit through its architecture, internal structures, and imagery and through the very visible actions of its clerks and the technologies that they used to record ownership and transfer of the national debt. The Bank of England, by those means, allowed creditors to interrogate the financial stability and reputation of the state in the same ways that they could interrogate the integrity of a private debtor.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Images of ruin: Decay in a post-industrial world

This thesis will examine the significance of ruin and decay in today\u27s society, particularly the sites of industrial ruin in a post-industrial environment. It will explore the ways in which sites of ruin have been used and represented by competing cultural interests in the past and present. A focus will be on the industry of photography and its effects upon our understanding of sites of ruin, revealing possibilities for change in our aesthetic awareness of these sites. I will also include a portfolio of my own images reflecting my views and interests on a decaying industrial landscape

Language and metaphor in postmodern architectural meaning: an interpretative model

The thesis aims to establish an interpretative model of, or mode of response to, postmodern and in particular, poststructuralist architecture. The existing lacuna of interpretation in this area is the result of the disfiguring, but ubiquitous, 'language of architecture' formulation which is formally challenged here as part of the construction of a model of interpretation. Interpretation as a key term is not only dealt with specifically in Chapter Five, but is also illuminated for example by the discussion in Chapter Two of signification and the complex relationship between visual image and language, since language has to emerge holistically as an aspect of architectural meaning. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part One comprises four theoretical chapters which are not necessarily 'about' architecture as such, but which provide the theoretical components of a model of interpretation. It needs to be clearly stated that this model is not epistemologically exclusive or absolute in any sense, but is only one among many other interpretative possibilities. The first chapter deals with methodology and a literature review. Chapter Two establishes the importance of signification and the sign and the semiotics of image and word. Chapter Three deals with ideas of what the postmodern might mean since the architecture principally dealt with is poststructuralist. The fulcrum moment of schism between Modernism and Postmodemism around 1960 is discussed, as is the vitally important allegorical nature of the postmodern. Chapter Four looks at the philosophy of language and meaning since language is indispensably a part of postmodern architectural meaning. Chapter Five discusses interpretation within the development of literary theory which must underpin the reading of buildings as the source of a coherent account of interpretation in general as well as particular architectural meaning. Part Two contains two chapters. Both are specifically about architecture and how it might be read in postmodern and poststructuralist context. The first, Chapter Six, deals with the trace of the development of postmodern architecture as both an aspect of Modernist architecture and a subversive imperative against it. Chapter Seven, the final chapter, puts into practice in an almost Leavisite way the interpretative stances established in Part One. Major works by poststructuralist architects are read in terms of metaphor, especially visual metaphor, rhetoric and allegory. From Part One to Part Two is from theory to practice. The thesis concludes by suggesting that architectural poststructuralist semantics and interpretation can only be deepened by dispensing with 'the language of architecture' in favour of language as emergent from architecture; the language of architecture does not exist

Ruins, Reconstruction and Representation: Photography and the City in Postwar Western Europe (1945-58)

This comparative cultural history of urban photography addresses France, Britain and West Germany during the period of reconstruction after the Second World War. It considers images circulating in the public sphere (including books, professional journals, popular magazines and official publications) and examines how the mediation through photography of architecture, urban space and everyday life shaped ways of seeing and thinking about cities in postwar Western Europe. Analysis focuses on four key fields: ruin photography in commemorative books (1945-49); representations of mass housing projects through architectural photography in the architectural press and official publications (1947-54); urban scenes in photographic magazines (1949-55); and urban photography in UNESCO’s early campaigns regarding human rights and intercultural understanding, as well as images of the institution’s purpose-built headquarters in Paris (1949-58). Whether of burned-out façades or sunlit concrete tower blocks, the wealth of publicly circulating images cohered in a set of specific discursive formations which, in dynamic and productive relation with one another, offered determinate perspectives on key topics of the reconstruction period. Moreover, in the transition from enmity to unity between the comparator nations which characterised the aftermath of total war and the escalation of the Cold War, the image of the city became a vital component of postwar Western European cultural identity facilitating the expression of important imagined communities, spaces and futures. Informed by the interdisciplinary field of photography studies, this research offers an interpretive analysis of dominant discursive formations, identifying the perspectives offered by postwar urban photography and excavating its relation to questions of cultural memory and forgetting, to national histories and imagined transnational communities, and to international relations and utopian thinking. It develops an innovative methodology for the interpretation of photography in the writing of cultural history and delivers a comparative historical analysis of a vital aspect of transnational postwar visual culture