The relationship between collective urban form and architecture is a timely question, particularly as the major body of contemporary urban research focuses on questions of ecology. While much of the ecological urbanism initiatives have concentrated on the answer – the adaption of urban form for contemporary hydrological and ecological conditions –, this presentation aspires to reanimate a discussion on how the very idea of the city and that of architecture as its correlate is currently being thrown into question. To this end, it raises a range of questions, beginning with the potential of utopianism as a manner of critical query/dialogue and a means to theorize the relationship of the idealized and the real, the whole and the part, and the social/political and the formal on the one hand. It also raises equally compelling questions regarding the possibility, means and modes of contemporary urbanism(s) through a specific discussion on the emergent theories, experiments and material practices of heliotropic urbanism.

Biography:

Gizem Deniz Güneri graduated with a professional degree in architecture after which, being awarded a Fulbright scholarship, she went on to complete a Masters in Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and a PhD in Architecture at Middle East Technical University. She has recently completed her studies as a research fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Her major interests include architectural utopianism, collective urban form, heliotropic urbanism and public health.