Architecture [Publication] Fund team invites you to the seminar ‘CITY. The Breaking Points’. The event will take place at CAC reading room Vilnius (Vokiečių 2, Vilnius) on 20. February. Seminar is the part of the third Architecture [Publication] Fund issue which, in the form of articles, essays and interviews,  studies the changes of spatial practices as the main breaking point of the city.

The seminar will continue the topic which was initiated in 2011 during the Architecture [Discussion] Fund series ‘City. The Breaking Point’.  This time the breaking points will be contextualised within four particular cities. Four inspiring speakers – urban planner Mindaugas Pakalnis, spatial theorist Benjamin Cope,  sociologist Siarhei Liubimau and  interdisciplinary artist  Miodrag Kuč – will present and discuss the key breaking points of Warsaw, Vilnius, Minsk and Berlin of the last decades. The seminar will be moderated by philosopher Nerijus Milerius.

Benjamin Cope. Tracking The Data (To A Breaking Point?) – The Praga District Of Warsaw

Mindaugas Pakalnis. Vilnius At The Breaking Point: Challenge Of Disintegration

Siarhei Liubimau. Popular Urbanism And The Issue Of Egalitarianism

Miodrag Kuč. Berlin. Becoming Normal?

Date: 20. February, starts at 6 p.m.

Place: CAC Reading Room, Vilnius, Vokiečių 2

Language: English

Benjamin Cope is Acting Director of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism, EHU. Lecturer of Courses on Localised Cultural Industries, the Production of Space in the Digital Age, Mapping the Everyday and Gender and Space. Research Interests: Critical Spatial Theory and Post-Socialist Cities, Analysis of Localised Cultural Events, Media and Cities. Also works at Zachęta - National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland, and occasional member of the Belarusian band, Nagual.

Mindaugas Pakalnis is architect, urban planner, chief architect of  municipality enterprise „Vilniaus planas” in  2004 – 2013.  He took part in developing the major development projects of Vilnius city and also city planning projects in other Lithuanian cities. Since 1996, he has been giving lectures in urban planning at VGTU. During the last few years Mindaugas performed different researches in investigating present urban development challenges of Lithuanian cities, stressing discussions on consequences of urban sprawl, lost density, social impacts of segregation on the cities, trying to find out vital models for city renovation.

Siarhei Liubimau -  PhD in Sociology (Polish Academy of Sciences), Lecturer in Sociology, Urban studies and Media studies (European Humanities University, Vilnius), former fellow at Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation; Central European University, Budapest; and the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.

Miodrag Kuč is an interdisciplinary artist and urban theorist trained as architect / urban planner in various cultural settings. His work explores the role of ephemeral structures in uncertain urban conditions and spatial appropriations of marginal social groups. He is founder of the studio ParaArtFormations which moves at the intersection of urban studies, performative-planning, artistic interventions and micropolitics. Currently he is teaching at Critical Urban Studies (EHU) and runs the Institute for Urban Pedagogy (Youth Centre BDP-Luke).

Nerijus Milerius is  Associate Professor at Vilnius University, Department of Philosophy. He works in the field of theories and practises of everyday life, theoretical issues of urban studies, urban changes in Eastern and Central Europe, visual phenomena and philosophy of film. Nerijus organised and participated in numerous seminars and conferences on the issues of philosophy and urban studies, is the co-editor of the issues on  philosophy, urban studies and visual culture.

About the Project: The project ‘Workshop of Architectural Criticism’ (MIP-13527) is an experimental virtual platform that combines artistic and academic research of architecture and urban studies. The Project uses competences of different researchers and architects as an editorial board, whose task is to create three workshops and publications on three themes of architecture, urbanism and design (Modernism: Between Nostalgia and Criticism, City. The Breaking Points, and Dissidence through Architecture). Each thematic issue will be edited by invited senior editor followed with a workshop based on the material developed by the “Architecture Fund” (www.archfondas.lt/leidiniu). The collected research material will be made public through an online platform, created particularly for that purpose, and freely distributed, copied and used by the readers. A certain amount of printed copies will be distributed among libraries and reading rooms. Each issue will be presented to the public during a special event.

The first two issues of  Architecture [Publication] Fund are already available here www.archfondas.lt/leidiniu/, the forthcoming third issue  –  ‘City. The Breaking Points’ – will be published by the middle of the year 2014, holding five lectures of the previous Architecture [Discussion] Fund series where Miles Glendinning, Tim Rieniets, Marc van Asseldonk and Auguste van Oppen, Etienne Turpin and Adam Bobbette, Matthias Rick  explored topics of Open-Source Urbanism, Urban Design And The Challenge Of The Shrinking Cities, Aberrant Architecture: Typologies Of Practice,  The Hundred Years War: Towards A Global Narrative Of Mass Housing; Fleeting Architecture: Raumlabor’s Instant Urbanism. The material of Thursday‘s seminar will be transformed  into four essays of the issue.

Organisers: Vilnius University and Architecture Fund

Editors of  the issue A[P]F03 ‘CITY. The Breaking points’: Nerijus Milerius and Indrė Ruseckaitė.

The seminar is funded by grant (No. MIP-099/2013) from the Research Council of Lithuania.

More info: Indrė Ruseckaitė, +370 67506605, www.archfondas.lt

arch@archfondas.lt