Monthly Archives: April 2021

AMPS Canterbury: Intangible Heritage

A conference on design, culture and technology – past, present, and future

Call for Papers closes 30 June 2021

http://architecturemps.com/canterbury-2022/

The buildings, towns and cities we inhabit are physical entities created in the past, experienced in the present, and projected to inform the future. The same can be said of the artefacts we use daily: designed furniture in the home, the mobile devices in our hands, the vehicles we see on our streets. However, each of these places, buildings and products had, at their inception, social and cultural roles beyond their ‘object’ status. They continue to have them today. What we understand a designed object to be then, is a complex question of material and social import, and an intricate play of the tangible and intangible identities. Increasingly, it is also a question of hybrid experiences and overlaid histories. This conference address the range of issues connected to this scenario.

AMPS Global Health Conference – Environments by Design: Health, Wellbeing, and Place

Call for Papers closes 25 June 2021

http://architecturemps.com/design-health/

On January 1st, 2020, the world woke to news that a pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, had been identified as a strain of coronavirus. By March, the World Health Organization would define it as a pandemic and the most serious global health threat on the planet. Under lockdown conditions the relationship between health and the spaces we inhabit became central. The response from professionals and academics was immediate. Public health officials became consultants on ‘healthy buildings’, infectious disease specialists advised on planning codes, mental health experts became advisors on design strategy. Environmental psychologists collaborated on adapting homes for lockdown, sociologists re-examined behaviour in public space; teachers critiqued new spatial uses of the classrooms and, by extension, interior work environments of every type. It is tempting to see this recent global concern about health and environments as new. The reality is, it has a long history. The public health profession was born from the housing conditions of the 19th century urban poor. ‘Sick building syndrome’ has been a concern for years. Demands for walkable neighbourhoods are long standing. Housing for the elderly, accessible design, and the broader healthy cities agenda globally, all pre-date COVID-19. Seen in this light, this conference seeks to bring recent experiences and responses into dialogue with these longer standing areas of research into health, wellbeing and environments.http://architecturemps.com/design-health/

AMPS New Delhi – Architecture, History, and the Smart City

http://architecturemps.com/new-delhi/

Call for Papers closes 30 June 2021

Smart, intelligent, digital, ubiquitous. While star architects develop ‘spectacle architecture’ for example, property developers produce gated communities, and urban planners grapple with urban expansion. This all happens while conservationists dedicate themselves to preserving the past and historians continue exploring former lives of our ancient towns. The city we imagine for the future then, will be a complex set of factors and components from the past, and present. Navigating this multiplicity will be key to the futures now being imagined and how we maintain our cultural traditions. The site of some of the most iconic architectural heritage in the world, it is also a country of burgeoning contemporary architecture and future planning. Operating within this complex tapestry is the National Government’s 100 Smart Cities Mission, an ambitious project to ‘update’ 100 of its existing cities, their infrastructure and their architecture In many ways, 100 Smart Cities captures issues at the heart of smart city agendas across the world and raises questions, possibilities and concerns related to ‘digital futures’ globally: How do architects respond to the ‘traditional’ needs of our cities and their people? What is the heritage we need to preserve and how do we do it? What are the practicalities of digital integration in existing infrastructures? What long term prosperity will emerge from the digital city? Will we be exposed to ‘surveillance capitalism’? How do we most benefit from the inevitable changes to the make-up of our future cities? How can our present condition and our cultural past coexist in this emerging future?

AMPS Calgary – Cultures, Communities, and Design: The Countryside

The Countryside’ – a polemically generic term Rem Koolhaas has recently used to reposition debates about our cities to those of rural areas. While posited as ‘new’, it is, in reality, a well established mode of thinking. Through notions such as the peri-urban for example, geographers, sociologists, architects, urban designers and regional economists have all debated the urban-rural relationship for several decades. Under this framework we are obliged to consider the city and its architecture on its own terms, but also address the ‘rural’ in its particular context and, importantly, explore the parallels and mutual influences at play.

ICE journal Engineering History and Heritage: Digital Tools for Historic Structures

Champion: Bill Harvey, Bill Harvey Associates Ltd, UK; and Jackie Heath, Project Director at Ramboll and CARE Accredited Engineer, UK

Full submissions by: 15 June 2021

Contact for more information

Find out what you need to do before submitting your articleThe use of Building Information Modelling, laser scanning, 3D photography and the associated processing tools  brings many benefits for the understanding and conservation of historic structures. However, the applications of these digital tools, which were often developed with new structures in mind, brings different challenges when used in the historic environment. Research and project experiences are developing quickly.

This issue will showcase successful uses of a range of digital tools and honestly examine where the technology did not quite live up to expectations and the lessons that can be shared. Topics covered will include but aren’t limited to:

  • Laser scanning of historic structures, technology, uses and benefits
  • 3D imagery
  • Post processing of digital data
  • Using BIM in the historic environment

Submit your abstract now