Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, will host a four day workshop on the Teaching/Learning of Urban Design and its Professional Role in Society. Events open to the public include presentations by two of the guest lecturers:
“Sympathy for the Alien” March 31, 2011 at 18:00
Bezalel’s Department of Architecture, 1 Bezalel St, Jerusalem
Colin Fournier, Head of the Urban Design Programme, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Colin Fournier will speak about the Friendly Alien in Graz, Austria, the building he designed with Peter Cook. He will discuss the context of modern architecture in historic areas.
An extract from the article, Austrian Alien by Terri Whitehead provides information about this building:
Something unexpected has appeared on the bank of the River Mur in Graz, Austria. Between the red brick roofs of neighboring historic buildings, “the friendly alien,” as it is locally known, has landed in Austria’s second largest city.
In celebration of Graz’s status as Cultural Capital of Europe 2003, British architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, in association with the Austrian firm Architektur Consult, have designed the Kunsthaus Graz, a new gallery for contemporary and multidisciplinary art. (Source: Architecture Week, December 2003)
Colin Fournier is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, and Course Director of the Masters of Architecture, Urban Design, at Bartlett, University College London, UK. Within the field of urbanism, there are three distinct areas of research activity in which Fournier is involved: Hyper-density: Investigations related to high-rise urban design and the development of compact cities; Sustainability: Research into sustainability principles applicable to urban development; and Generative systems: Use of generative design methods at the scale of urban design.
“Urban Forms” April 6, 2011 at 14:30
Bezalel’s Yafo 23 Gallery, Jerusalem
Ivor Samuels, former head of the Urban Design Program, Oxford Brookes University
Ivor Samuels will speak about Urban Forms, based on his book of the same name. He will speak about preparing the main guidelines for Urban Design in the UK, as well as the state of urban design in the world and how it relates to Israel.
Ivor Samuels is an architect planner with experience in the public and private sectors in the UK and abroad. Formerly Chair of the Joint Center for Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University, he is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Urban Morphology Research Group at Birmingham University, Associate of the Urban Renaissance Institute at Greenwich University, Honorary professor of the national University of Peru. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Denmark, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, the US and Australia. He is a consultant to the Civic Trust Regeneration Unit on Town Center Master plans.
The four day workshop will examine the teaching/learning of urban design, followed by a review of the urban issues facing the region in general and Israel in particular. There will be a discussion of issues such as the role of urban design in decision-making process and multi-disciplinary content of urban design studies. International academics attending the Bezalel workshop include: Francis Nordemann, École d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville; Karel Bakker, University of Pretoria; Julian Beinart, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Marco de Michelis, IUAV, Venice. The Masters in Urban Design Program at Bezalel is headed by Prof. Ze’ev Druckman.
