Fieldwork for Writing Urban Places

Working Group 4

Authors

  • Luis Santiago Baptista Lusofona University, Lisbon
  • Slobodan Velevski Faculty of Architecture in Skopje

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/writingplace.8-9.7252

Abstract

Fieldwork within the COST Action Writing Urban Places aims to research the possibilities of interdisciplinary narrative practices in understanding and activating urban contexts in European cities. As a way to sustain and foster the meaningfulness, appropriation and integration of places and their communities, it intends to reflect and test its concepts and methodologies in reality. Fieldwork bridges the link between investigation and practice, knowledge and performativity, thinking and doing. Gathering expertise of diverse disciplines, from the social and human sciences to urbanism, architecture and art, fieldwork is debated in the context of the spatial practices, with their critical and aesthetic dimensions. By visiting places (Almada, Limerick, Tallinn, Osijek, Tampere, Çanakkale, Skopje, Tirana, Delft) and sharing knowledge, collecting existing narratives and implementing new ones, crossing local inhabitants and international participants, fieldwork activities allow for a deeper involvement in physical and social contexts and an active engagement with communities and stakeholders. 

Author Biographies

Luis Santiago Baptista, Lusofona University, Lisbon

Luís Santiago Baptista – Co-leader WG4 – is an architect, researcher and curator. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture of Lusofona University (ULHT), Lisbon, and School of Arts and Design (ESAD-CR), Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. He holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Architectural Culture from the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon (FA-UTL), and is a PhD candidate in Architecture and Urban Culture at the School of Architecture of the University of Coimbra (DARQ-UC). His research interests are contemporary theory of architecture and urban culture. He is working group leader in the European project COST Action Writing Urban Places. He develops a multifaceted activity encompassing professional practice, teaching, criticism, curatorship and publishing. He was the winner, with Maria Rita Pais, of the FAD Award of Theory and Criticism 2020 with the book Journey into the Invisible

Slobodan Velevski, Faculty of Architecture in Skopje

Slobodan Velevski – Leader, WG4 – is holding a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism. He is an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje, N. Macedonia. Previously he graduated in Skopje and concluded his master studies at Dessau Institute of Architecture in Germany. In 2018, with Marija Mano Velevska, he co-curated the exhibition ‘Freenigspace’, representing the Republic of Macedonia at the 16th Architectural exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. His academic and design interests are mainly focused on research that explores the scale and complexities of architecture and urban design. 

References

Walter Benjamin, ‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, in: Neil Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (London/New York: Routledge, 1997 [1939]).

Gabrielle Brainard, Rustam Mehta and Thomas Moran (eds.), Perspecta 41, Grand Tour (2008).

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1984).

Guy Debord, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, in: Tom McDonough (ed.), The Situationists and the City (London/New York: Verso, 2009 [1956]).

Suzanne Ewing et al. (eds.), Architecture and Field/Work (London/New York: Routledge, 2011).

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991 [1974]).

Henri Lefebvre, ‘The Right to the City’, in: Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996 [1968]).

Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar (eds.), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).

Andrea Oppenheimer Dean and Timothy Hursley, Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and the Architecture of Decency (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).

Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006).

Jane Rendell, Site-writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010).

Robert Smithson, ‘The Monuments of Passaic’, Artforum 6/4 (1967).

Robert Smithson, ‘A Provisional Theory of Nonsites’, in: Jack Flam (ed.), Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (University of California Press, 1996 [1968]).

Slobodan Velevski et al., ‘Taking Place: Reflections from the Fieldworker’, Writingplace Journal 7 (2023), 5-15.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 1977 [1972]).

Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Moving Camera, 1929.

Published

2023-11-14