Phenomenology of Architecture and Urban Culture

Renowned architect and philosopher of architecture Alberto Pérez-Gómez (McGill University, Montreal) will lecture at a seminar hosted by Urban Culture Lab at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies.

Alberto Pérez-Gómez is the author of seminal books (published with the MIT Press) on the crisis of architecture in modernity. Searching for aesthetic and ethic approaches (rather than technological ones) to architecture and urban space, Pérez-Gómez has developed ground-breaking Studios of Architecture in History and Theory at McGill University.

In worldwide architecture, Alberto Pérez-Gómez represents a voice informed by the humanities. Bringing together a cross-disciplinary group og speakers, the seminar at Urban Culture Lab will discuss bodily and experiential issues in urban and architectural culture. Scholars of aesthetics and urbanity will present papers in sessions on "Drawing, Thinking, Experiencing", "Architecture and Subjectivity", "Living Private and Public Spaces" and "Space, Literature, Cartography".

In his keynote lecture, Alberto Pérez Gómez' addresses the importance of phenomenology and 'third generation' cognitive science for describing human perception. Arguing that spatial perception challenges widespread assumptions in modern architecture, Pérez-Gómez outlines how the meaning of architecture cannot be reduced to 'pictures'.

A very recent text by Alberto Pérez-Gómez, "Mood and meaning in architecture", is available for participants in the seminar.

PhD students welcome 

Ph.D. students at Danish universities and schools of architecture are invited to participate in the seminar which is also a PhD course (0,3 ECTS points = participation without paper).

PhD students may also present a research poster to be discussed in the breaks throughout Friday March 13 (1,5 ECTS points).

PhD students desiring to participate and/or to present a poster should contact Ass. Professor Henrik Reeh, Urban Culture Lab, before March 9.

Programme

10:15 - 11:30  Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor, School of
                       Architecture, McGill University:
                       Mood and Meaning: Embodied Mind, Enactive Perception and Architecture

11:45 - 12:30  Drawing, Thinking, Experiencing

                       Inter Berling Hyams, Ph.D. candidate,
                       Department of Culture and Identity, Roskilde University:
                       Architectural Digital Fictions: Phenomenological Reflections on Learning to
                       'Make' Architecture

                       Henrik Reeh, Associate Professor, Chairman of Urban Culture Lab,
                       University of Copenhagen:
                       Sonnets in Babylon - Daniel Libeskind in Venice

12:30 - 13:30  Lunch

13:30 - 14:15  Architecture and Subjectivity  

                       Julio Hans C. Jensen, Associate Professor, Department of English,
                       Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen:
                       Architecture and Interiority

                       Anne Elisabeth Sejten, Professor, Department of Culture and
                       Identity, Roskilde University:
                       Paul Valéry: Singing Buildings and the Phenomenological Body

14:30 - 15:15  Living Private and Public Spaces

                       Henriette Steiner, Associate Professor, Depatment of Geosciences
                       and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen:
                       #1 Breakfast at Home and the Ant Chair Copy

                       Dorte Skot-Hansen, Associate Professor & Head of Center for Cultural
                       Policy Studies, Royal School of Library and Information Science, University
                       of Copenhagen:
                       The Library: An Urban Living Room

15:30 - 16:15  Space, Literature, Cartography 

                       Martin Zerlang, Professor, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies,
                       University of Copenhagen:
                       Place des Vosges (Paris) and Pierre Corneille's "La Place Royale"

                       Frederik Tygstrup, Professor, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies,
                       University of Copenhagen:
                       Affective Cartography