Urbanity Research

  • LectureThe Place of the City, between image and identity
  • Lecture Mariusz CzepczyńskUrban semiotics.Meaning and form of Central European cities

Teams of students from architectural schools will work during summer semester 08/09 and winter semester 09/10 on research in their respective capitals. Seven teams will share their experience of urban spaces with the aim of reflecting city development and proposing future visions for Central European capitals on workshops in Prague.

The aim of the whole project is to make city more readable, understandable. The identity we understand not as description of the current situation but as a vision. Vision not in sense of futuristic screenplays, but vision based on the city background. We do not want to solve particular small problems or to fix them. Reparations and consolidations of the status quo are today’s common strategies of all European cities. Project should be at the opposite side, project should bring new optimism to the cities. In the Urbanity project we should free ourselves and look for real meanings of the terms we daily operate with. It is important to focus on the new meaning of the capital toward Europe at the beginning of the XXI century. Project has got already support from five mayors, Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, Ljubljana and Budapest- the last two are in process. Power of the project is in joining all seven cities and all researches together.