Fables of the Reconstruction

Fables of the Reconstruction 2024

The Independent School for the City is organising another edition of the Fables of the Reconstruction seminar in November 2024. Building on the insights from last year, we will this time focus on the mechanisms behind the reconstruction of cities, contrasting the involvement of global conglomerates and multinationals - often characterised by generic concepts - with the need for locally rooted solutions.

The seminar departs from the notion that rebuilding a destroyed city is not just about replacing or rebuilding its infrastructure and architecture. It is about making the choice which and whose city should be rebuilt. It is a choice as much about the Idea of the city as about its form. A reconstructed city is not just a brick and mortar replacement of everything that was damaged, but also a story of the history and the future of the city. A heavily idealised and edited story that tells of power structures and ideology. In the reconstruction of cities ruined by war or natural disaster, questions of identity, ethnicity, history and culture are paramount. 

From the reconstructed heart of the city of Rotterdam, this seminar will look at the rebuilding of Ukraine, Turkey, Iraq and many other places. We see how the reconstruction is initiated by globally operating consultancy firms, finance companies and construction and design offices, which often have a very close relationship with the American government and international institutions like the World bank and the IMF and stand for an extreme neo-liberal attitude towards ‘nation building’ and the (re)construction of cities. At the same time, we invited coalitions of designers who try to use tactical and participatory urbanism to work from the existing context, building upon the properties of the place and the needs of the residents. These coalitions often have good intentions and are supported by a large number of spatial professionals all over the world, but it is difficult for them to gain a real foothold in the bureaucratic processes. 

In this seminar we will try to understand the place of consultants, bankers, politicians, engineers, planners, architects and activists, and how they influence the development of visions and plans. Through lectures and conversations the seminar will provoke an exchange of ideas across borders. Rotterdam will be the fitting background against which this seminar will play out.

About the Speakers

Merve Bedir
Merve Bedir is an architect and researcher. She is the co-founder of Matbakh-Mutfak مطبخ, a collective focused on the kitchen as a cultural space in Gaziantep, Turkey. Merve studied at Delft University of Technology, her work explores hospitality and mobility. In addition, her work explores human and non-human relationships in the context of ecology and cybernetics. During a fellowship, Merve researched hospitality and togetherness and connectedness in urban areas and public space.

Alexander D’Hooghe
Alexander D’Hooghe is co-founder of ORG Permanent Modernity - a design agency and think tank based in Brussels, Antwerp and New York City, founder of Solv a tech company providing predictive analytics and intelligence, formerly a tenured professor at MIT and the founding director of the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT. With ORG he works around the globe on design and planning projects, as well as on the advanced analysis of project performance, and the management of implementation processes across the scales of architecture, urbanism and systems. 

Naomi Hoogvervorst
Naomi Hoogwervorst is Senior Urban Planner and Programme Officer at UN Habitat. She studied Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences at the Technical University of Delft and is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, working on various urban projects.

Palii Anastasiia & Oleksandra Naryzhna (Urban Reform)
Palii Anastasiia and Oleksandra Naryzhna are both architects and urbanists at Urban Reform, an NGO that was founded in 2014, the year when Ukrainians changed power in the country through the Revolution of Dignity, the war in Donbass. With the ongoing war in Ukraine, Urban Reform is working to create temporary solutions to provide housing for IDPs, researching best practices for rebuilding cities after destruction and gathering all efforts to be useful to our country and our cities.

Oleksandra Naryzhna is the co-founder and head of the non-government organization Urban Reform (Ukraine), managing partner of the Urban Reform office. She also serves as managing partner of the Urban Reform office. From 2015 to 2021, she played a key role in the development of higher architectural and urban education in Ukraine, helping establish the Kharkiv School of Architecture (KhSA), where she served as head and guarantor of the undergraduate program. Oleksandra has extensive experience teaching higher education programs, conducting workshops, and leading short courses, including those designed for teenagers. Since 2014, she has been actively involved in social initiatives, implementing various urban projects and advocacy campaigns across Ukrainian cities. Her professional work also includes architectural projects, public space design, and tactical urbanism efforts.

Anastasiia Palii is an urbanist, project lead, and board member of the NGO Urban Reform (Ukraine). She oversees projects focused on the recovery of cities and communities in Ukraine, as well as territorial development and public space design. Over the past three years, her work has focused on creating visions for Ukrainian cities, involving people in the design process and activating communities, particularly youth. Additionally, for four years, she was involved in architectural education in Ukraine, leading the preparatory department at the Kharkiv School of Architecture, where she developed year-long programs and workshops in architecture and urbanism. 

Julie Lawson
Julie Lawson is Honorary Associate Professor with the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University (Australia, based in Europe 2023) and a leading international housing researcher. She is principle author of the comprehensive study #Housing2030, which examines a range of policy tools and best practices to promote affordable, low carbon and energy efficient housing. Over to past 2 years she has provided expertise for the first Recovery Council of the Ukrainian Government (Lugano Plan) and continuing advice on policy, legislation, institutional reforms and capacity building efforts. In 2022 she initiated the ENHR Working Group of policy researchers on Crises, Conflict and Recovery with Ukrainian colleagues and in 2023 co-organised a course Tools for Recovery with colleagues from Ukrainian organisations and TU Delft and also two international symposia Rebuilding a Place to Call Home, in The Hague and Lviv.

Jan Willem Petersen
Jan Willem Petersen is an urban planner, architect, and founder of the office Specialist Operations. He has been involved in various projects around the rebuilding of resilient conflict-affected environments, amongst which the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Mosul, Iraq, and the evaluation of the reconstruction outcomes of the Dutch Task Force Uruzgan mission in Afghanistan. Petersen's research centres on design fundamentals for conflict-affected environments, in close collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Army and the Dutch Ministry of Defence. Additionally, he serves as a university lecturer at the Netherlands Defence Academy, where he educates the next generation of military officers on design in conflict.

Tuğçe Tezer
Tuğçe Tezer is a faculty member at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Her research includes urban planning, urban history, historical geography, urban morphology of Antakya. Tuğçe’s postdoctoral research at FEUP CITTA, University of Porto focused on the urban morphology of Antakya between 1910-1960. She has been working on the post-earthquake recovery process of Antakya since February 2023. She had completed the ‘Antakya Walkable City’ project (supported by SALT Research Fund) just before the 6 February earthquakes took place. 

Wouter Vanstiphout
Wouter Vanstiphout is part of the Dean Team of Independent School for the City and partner of Crimson Historians & Urbanists. He is an architectural historian and researcher who has written extensively on urbanism and spatial politics. From 2008 - 2010, Wouter held the chair Design & Politics at the TU Delft and from 2012 to 2016, he was a member of the national advisory council on the environment and infrastructure.

Michelle Provoost
Michelle Provoost is part of the Independent School for the City’s Deans Team, partner of Crimson Historians and Urbanists, and director of the International New Town Institute. She is an architectural historian specialised in urban planning history, postwar architecture and contemporary urban development.

Programme

SESSION #1 - FRIDAY 15 NOV. 2024
The reconstruction of cities and infrastructure destroyed by war is a multi-scale matter. It goes from local rebuilding, through urban masterplanning and national restructuring to international spheres of influence. What has it meant to Rotterdam, bombed in 1940? Reconstruction goes from the creation of new public spaces to a repositioning of a country in the global order. Which futures are being built in Ukraine? 

13:00 - 14:15 Introduction by Wouter Vanstiphout & Michelle Provoost + conversation

14:30 - 15:15 Online presentation by Julie Lawson + conversation

15:30 - 16:30  Presentation by Palii
Anastasiia and Oleksandra Naryzhna of the Ukrainian NGO Urban Reform

16:30 - 17:00 Wrap-Up

SESSION #2 - FRIDAY 22 NOV. 2024
The destruction of a city, by war or by natural disaster, offers opportunities of breaking with the past and realising political agenda’s or consolidating long held positions. Who is first on the scene often determines for decades the rights to the city. Which political agenda’s are being deployed in post earthquake Turkey, and who is imagining the future of Gaza right now? How can we rebuild, but also: how can we resist?

14:00 - 14:30 Recap and introduction

14:30 - 16:00 Presentation by Merve Bedir and Tuğçe Tezer on community reconstruction projects in Antakya and Gaziantep (Turkey) after the earthquake.

16:30 - 17:30 Presentation by Alexander d' Hooghe of ORG - Permanent Modernity about working on large scale reconstruction plans + conversation

SESSION #3 - FRIDAY 29 NOV. 2024
Given that each situation asks for specific strategies and designs, are there however general lessons that can be drawn from experiences of cities that are in the process of recovery? Examples are drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan and Kenya. For places as diverse is it possible to write a manual that would allow destroyed cities to address their needs from the immediate to the long term, and still work with the local context?

13:00 - 17:00 Presentations and conversations by various experts amongst others Jan Willem Petersen, Michelle Provoost, Naomi Hoogervorst, Oleksandra Tkachenko, and Wouter Vanstiphout.

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Seminar Details

For whom is this Seminar?
Any professional background: Sociologists, historians, writers, and other urban thinkers. Planners and architects and other designers. Artists, activists, grassroots organisations and other urban do-ers

What does the seminar offer?
Lectures by experts and tutors. Conversations with likeminded professionals from a wide array of disciplines. Being part of a learning community.

What will you learn?
Different approaches to reconstruction of cities after destruction. The decisions, ideology and global powers behind the reconstruction of cities. A historical view of urban destruction and reconstruction. Seeing architecture and urban planning in terms of ideas and memory. A way to look at current events in terms of long term developments.