Urbanism at borders

Interdisciplinary Global Workshop for Research Network

Robert Gordon University is proud to be hosting the inaugural Interdisciplinary Global Workshop from Wednesday 5 to Saturday 8 September 2018. The event will take place at our Garthdee Campus, on the banks of the River Dee.

Border research emphases on the discourse analysis on critical issues and connotation of separation – demarcation – segregation and conflicts and translated and theorizing these issues in various patterns of urbanism. Borders determine the degree of how regions are positioned in the global maps with the condition with which regions are valued, categorised and marked by its capacity to create individual geographical identities and unique settlement patterns. Borders define socially and economically incompatible systems that influence the nature of mobility of goods, human traffic, and economic transactions that suggest temporal, subdued, blurring socio-cultural entities defined by urban orders. Borders create these blurring urban orders along its boundaries defined by lack of cohesiveness with either sides of a border.

Borders are more than geographically defined separations, but accounts of metamorphoses and metaphors that two neighbouring states are defined by the economy, politics, culture, and religion – manifested by its typological entities.

Mapping Borders reflecting on the following issues:

  • Characteristics of social displacement at the borders
  • Transient/temporal settlement
  • Typologies and Form of Settlement
  • Conflict and Cultural hybridity
  • The architecture of weak forms on borderlines
  • Regenerative architecture as a socio-cultural policy
  • A phenomenology of generic places
  • Borders invoke centres: is there a new foundation?
  • The occupation of place: between reality and authorities
  • Crisis communication and the ‘architecture’ of media
  • Quick solutions: the printed habitat
  • New Social formation/Social Capital

Borders Research Scopes

  • Collaborative research initiation among partnering countries – Intermediate actions
  • Collaborative thematic conferences – September 2018
  • Publication as monographs – post conference monograph with Springer
  • Filming and documentation – part of conference submission
  • Design charrette – school-level masters design studio projects

The deadline for abstracts is Tuesday 30 January 2018. Send abstract by email or post on or before to:

Helen Aggasild
Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment
Robert Gordon University
Sir Ian Wood Building,
Garthdee Road,
Aberdeen,
AB10 7GJ,

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