co+labo radović co+labo September of international design workshops+symposia has started

co+labo radović participated an in international design-research workshop in Belgrade, Serbia (Faculty of Architecture in the period 31.8 – 10.9.2017). Our team Yamashita Shohei, Kato Shun, Kinoshita Norimi and Motoyama Masahito joined forty students and professors from the participating six universities from Serbia, Italy and Japan (the  University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture, Serbia, La Sapienza University, Faculty of Architecture, Rome, University of Camerino, Faculty of Architecture, Ascoli Piceno, Italy, University of Sassari, Department for Architecture, Design and Urbanism, Alghero, Italy, Meiji University, Boontharm Studio and Keio University, co+labo).

As Professor Zoran Djukanović, the Organiser of this event, explained that “the Workshop and Symposium “Belgrade in the Plural” is oriented to urban research and urban design research of cultural and urban diversity in the contemporary city, inside the frame of the mainstream urban development tendencies: responsible, sustainable, smart and creative community, based on participation based and good urban design. The Symposium offers keynote lectures by each of the professors, presentations by external experts and debates. The parallel programme offers lectures by all visiting professors."

The teams worked in six groups, with carefully balanced cultural difference and skills. During the final presentation,  a Jury of visiting lecturers and experts have selected the most successful project. Yamashita-san was a co+labo member of the winning team, thus having the best farewell to Milano, where he starts his Double Degree at Politecnico ( 頑張ってください, Shohei-san!).

Professor Djukanović will be a Visiting Professor at co+labo in November this year. His foundational text for the Belgrade in the Plural workshop has been published in the July-August issue of Domus Magazine. You can find that essay (in, we hope, sufficiently good resolution) below.

co+labo radović        about co+labo+Keio Architecture@EAAE Conference in Bordeaux        

On 31 August, Darko delivered a key-note address to the Conference of European Architectural Education Association, held in Bordeaux. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of EAAE, the focus of the Conference was on teaching and research activities that European schools developed with their partners beyond Europe's borders.

This invitation was in recognition of Darko's experience and research in that field, with initiative coming from the École nationale supérieure d'architecture et de paysage de Bordeaux, with whom he collaborated in an exciting research into architectural and urban design education Bangkok-Melbourne-Bordeaux BMB (2003-5), the results of which were published as Cross-cultural Urban Design, global or local practice (Routledge).
Darko’s talk to the most illustrious of academic audiences in the field of architectural education started by referring to, and reflecting upon some of his own experiences of immersion into diverse teaching and learning practices in the fields of production of space. A special emphasis was on Japan and his rare, internal perspectives of the Japanese academia. As the first foreigner professor of architecture (Keio) and urbanism (Tokyo) ever at the two oldest universities in the country, over the last ten years Darko could not only observe, but also get involved and contribute to the arguably unique ways of thinking and making architecture in Japan. Those experiences deny routine, and demand constant rethinking of the fundamentals of the subject thought and investigated - and co+labo and Keio Architecture were at the very centre of presentation.The talk was deliberately polemological, crafted in hope to, in de Certeau's way, “force theory to recognise its own limits”.
The main aim of the address was to acknowledge and celebrate diverse, situated knowledges, and too point at risks inherent to any foreign intervention - even when careful and best intended.

(illustrations in this post: strips of slides form Darko's presentation; photos by EAAE)