Les Back
Professor
University of Glasgow
Les Back is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow. He is also a journalist, broadcaster and musician. His published work is mainly in the areas of the sociology of race and racism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, urban culture, music and sport. His book Migrant City (Routledge, 2018) (co-authored with Shamser Sinha, Charlynne Bryan, Vlad Baraka & Mardoche Yembi) develops an experimental mode of co-creation in which research participants are also credited as authors. Most recently, he has published The Unfinished Politics of Race (University of Cambridge Press, 2022) with colleagues Michael Keith, John Solomos & Kalbir Shukra.
Why City Stories Matter: Urban Life as a Narrative Achievement
City stories are sociologically interesting because they claim to talk about society now. They can also define what was in the past or might be in the future, whether they are nostalgic or dystopian tales. Cities are not just urban systems that are comprehended through the apparatus of ‘big data’ or the engines of political economy; storytellers also make them. Those stories have moral projects, too, and while we should always question the underpinning facts of an account through them, we can evaluate the values of the teller. Drawing on 40 years of urban research in British cities, Les Back will argue why city stories matter. From narratives of the ‘death of community’ to tales of ‘racial harmony’ or ‘divisive gentrification’, the urban community is conceived not just as a physical topography or social relations but as a narrative achievement. How people tell city stories prepares them for how they can live, what is possible and the terms of life itself.
Henriette Steiner
Professor
University of Copenhagen
Henriette Steiner is Professor and Head of Section of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Society at the University of Copenhagen. She works on the history and philosophy of architecture, landscapes and cities. Her research investigates how shifting historical structures – morals, ethics, politics and cultural practices – shaped and continue to shape the buildings, cities, landscapes and cultural imaginaries we have inherited from the 19th and 20th centuries’ Western industrial culture. Understanding this history and heritage is key if we want to respond to the big challenges of the 21st century without repeating mistakes made by our predecessors, and to stimulate more just, equitable and sustainable spatial practices for the future. Recent books include Tower to Tower (with Kristin Veel, MIT Press, 2020), Touch in the Time of Corona (with Kristin Veel, De Gruyter, 2021), and Untold Stories – Women Gender and Architecture in Denmark (with Jannie Bendsen and Svava Riesto, Strandberg Publishing, 2023). Together with Svava Riesto, she is currently co-PI of two research projects Stories from Sofiegården: Alternative Forms of Living in Copenhagen as Cultural Heritage (funded by Augustinus Foundation) and Learning from Collaboration – Building Future Practice (funded by Realdania) and a recent recipient of a Monograph Fellowship of the Carlsberg Foundation.
Untold Narratives of Collaboration in Architecture and Planning
In the emerging Nordic welfare states of the post-World War 2 period, the building boom from roughly 1945 to 1975 was characterized by great technological, architectural, urban and social innovations which went hand-in-hand with industrialization of architectural construction. While the latter has often been subject to criticism, several researchers have pointed out that the architecture of the period was also characterized by an exceptional type of holistic thinking whereby architects, landscape architects and planners worked closely together across professional divides and joined forces with engineers, politicians, builders, artists, social workers, teachers, doctors, residents and many others to create a new built environment that would befit the period’s emerging welfare states. This particularly concerns large-scale public architecture projects such as housing, museums, hospitals and schools. Moreover, this happened at a time when the educational landscape was changing and new social groups were entering educational programmes and thus also entering professional practice in the design fields.
The contributions of practitioners across architecture, landscape architecture and planning have traditionally been investigated in separate streams of historical research. But how did people from these professions work together in the building boom period of the mid-20th century? What characterized their invisible collaborations across differences of profession, class, gender, generation and geography? In which ways was their work interlaced with that of people from other disciplines or societal sectors when it came to the value-driven transformative ethos that characterized much of welfare state architecture, landscape architecture and planning? What, then, did it take to make a collaboration successful, and when and where did barriers and conflicts emerge? These are the questions that I will broach in this lecture, using examples from the Danish postwar building as case studies and building on seminal research from the research project Women in Danish Architecture 1925-75 and Learning from Collaboration – Building Future Practice (both co-led with Svava Riesto). Methodologically, moreover, the lecture will ask what narratives strategies can be developed in the face of the dearth of archival material that researchers often face when looking for documentation of collaborations across professional boundaries and diverse social groups.
Lieven Ameel
Dosent
Tampere University