Monday 29 June to Friday 3 July 2009
Interior Architecture staff and students from the University of Brighton School of Architecture and Design would like to invite you to our 2009 international conference and summer school for interior architecture and design students.
The summer school is a mechanism for students to address many of the issues that will be raised in the conference. It will consist of a series of workshops led by design tutors and practitioners from various institutions, both nationally and internationally. The workshops will be concerned with the occupation of spaces in and around Brighton. Based on a forensic analysis of each site, students will work in groups to develop a strategy for altering each site and enhancing the experience of the space through its occupation over the week. Work will be presented to a panel of guest critics, conference delegates and design practitioners, and will be discussed as part of the general conference debate. Through this feedback-loop we hope to encourage a fresh activation of the conceptual and theoretical discussions and an inclusion of the student voice. Material from the workshops and presentations will be included in the conference publication.
The summer school will also provide a forum for discussions concerning the establishment of a network for interior architecture and design students, to raise the profile of interior architecture/design and widen the debate about the disciplines. This network could assist in the development of employment shows, employer networks and the promotion of interior architecture/design as disciplines that specialise in working in and around existing structures.
This network will enable existing links to be sustained, and the establishment of new collaborations with comparable courses, academics and designers throughout the UK and internationally.
Issues of inhabitation, enclosure and containment are of critical importance in this new century and an understanding of relationships between politics, place and space is indispensable for any sort of practice today.
Researchers, practitioners and students in the fields of art, architecture, interior and spatial design must be open to readings of territory and design processes that are relevant to our current situation. This event will examine the motivations, forces, constraints and drives that are usually present when designing spaces for human inhabitation.
Occupation may be benign or may be achieved through the acquisition of territory by force. Occupation may also be a state of mind where daily routines and activity are curtailed, moulded and adapted to a particular environment. Spaces are composed or formed through these processes and the conference will address the frictions and negotiations that occur between built space and inhabitants.
The conference will last for three days from Thursday 2 to Saturday 4 July 2009, and presentations will address four general themes:
A large number of abstracts have been received from the disciplines of architecture, interiors and spatial design. Full conference papers have been invited from researchers, designers, practitioners and teachers from the UK, Australasia, North America and South East Asia. Keynote speakers, who will address issues on the conference themes, include: Irit Rogoff, (Professor of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths College, University College London); Eyal Weizman (Professor of Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University College London); Neil Leach (Professor of Architectural Theory, University of Brighton); Fred Scott (Visiting Professor at Rhode Island School of Design); Maxine Naylor (Professor of Design Research, University of Brighton) and Markus Miessen (London and Berlin based architect, researcher, educator and writer who founded studio Miessen).
