Arch.Uth Μεταπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα Arch.Uth UTH.gr English
City Trailer
05/05/2005
c i t y  t r a i l e r

poster, list of videos

 

Conception

The city is a body

John of Salisbury

The project is concerned with the observation and analysis of living spaces, environment and nature with regard to the phenomenon of ‘city’. This means to produce images, which move between the virtual and the real of a city.

Cities provide points of reference, levels of perception and reception for their residents, who define their habitat. These spaces of identity are partial spaces, which are interconnected to the cultural and historical developments, myths and the systems of order and economy of the city. Our local identities are marked by the cultural past and perceptions of the present.

The citizen of the Polis of Athens identified with his city. The inhabitant of a mediaeval town in France called himself bourgeois andBürger in Germany. Spaces of identity are open spaces, in which different people meet for exchange. They are defined by these open spaces. The public space plays a crucial role in this respect. Those spaces differ from the orientation spaces of the tourists. Landmarks for the tourists are mostly museums, architecture, railway stations, sights.

The visitors to a city, tourists are collectors. They collect images, city vistas, impressions of people, worldviews. These images are synthetic. They are codifiable and exchangeable .

The empoverishment of the senses are a problem of our time. Have today’s inhabitants of our cities lost their spaces of identity? Our city environment plays an important role. At present we measure our urban spaces through the time it takes to cross and leave them. Our daily life if filled with efforts to deny, reduce, repress, and avoid conflicts. The residents of a city are dispersed. They meet in shopping malls for the purpose of consumption.

The project  c i t y  t r a i l e r  motivates students from different cities to produce short video clips about the images they have of their city. The DVDs will be exchanged. The original idea was  that the participants of the individual project groups send their films to the other project groups, so that the totality of the project could be publicly screened at all the Higher Education institutions involved. This idea is still valid. However, in the meantime something extraordinary has happened. The project was selected by the committee of the 22. World Congress of Architects, which will take place in Istanbul in 2005.

We are absolutely delighted, not least because art and architecture students will work jointly on this very pertinent theme and within the same medium – video.

We trust that the project has opened up a new dimension of discourse amongst students in European institutions of Higher Education and wish all participants new impulses and every success for the project.

The project City Trailer was an iniative of  Professor Azade Köker, Institut für Elementares Formen,  Fakultät Architektur, TU Braunschweig, FB Architektur, Germany

It was presented at the UIA 2005 Istanbul Congress, May 5th 2005 at tarik zafer tunaya kültür merkezi.

 

participating institutions:

Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, Germany

Kunstakademie Münster, Germany

Burg Giebichenstein Hochschule für Kunst und Design Halle, Germany

University Thessaly, Greece

Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece

School of Art and Design University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

Universidade Lisboa de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Portugal

Universitdade Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Portugal