The dynamic relationships between cities and their rivers, a landscape of potentially critical adaptability and resilience, is the focus of the 2015 Garden and Landscape Studies Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks. Building on the emergence of urban humanities and urban landscape history, we propose to consider the urban river as a city-making landscape deserving of careful reading and analysis: past, present, and future.
The subject of this symposium builds on a new multi-year initiative in urban landscape studies, which Dumbarton Oaks is launching in 2015 with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its principal goal is to create a dialogue between designers and scholars to address the landscape consequences of advancing urbanization. With this task in mind, the 2015 symposium aims to bring together the work of contemporary designers with the historical perspectives of scholars, encouraging practitioners and historians to bridge the gaps between their modes of thinking. We would particularly welcome proposals for collaborative or paired presentations by designers and historians working on similar topics or the same city.
Please submit a 300 word abstract to Thaisa Way ( tway@uw.edu ) by September 14, 2014 to be considered for the 2015 Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies symposium: River Cities: Historical and Contemporary. If accepted, full papers will be due on March 1, 2015 for presentation in May 2015. For more information, contact Thaisa Way, University of Washington / tway@uw.edu / 206 685 2523.
The call for papers may also be found at : www.doaks.org/research/garden-landscape
ARQ 121: Utopian América
Coined by Thomas More in 1516, utopia holds a telling ambiguity: it means “no place” (ou-topos) but is sufficiently close to “good place” (eu-topos). Since then, the concept has oscillated between aspiration and critique—between imagining radical alternatives and...