Ph.D. Masterclass
Defining Urban Sites:
Theory in Context
Prof. Andrea Kahn, Columbia University, New York
21-22 February 2011
Organised by the Research Group Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, Centre for Forest &
Landscape (F&L), at the University of Copenhagen
The interdisciplinary seminar “Defining Urban Sites: Theory in Context” aims at giving Ph.D. students
in urban studies, design research, landscape architecture, architecture history and theory the
opportunity to orient and qualify the theoretical foundations of their ongoing research. The course is
also open to other researchers and to students with particular interest in the field.
The seminar is in English, requires previous reading and offers 3 ECTS credits to PhD fellows upon
preparation, conference participation and presentation of their project and for those who are not
chosen for a presentation of their project the seminar offers 2 ECTS credits to PhD fellows upon
preparation and conference participation.
The seminar has two parts:
1) The bonus-part is a lecture “Field Formations” by Andrea Kahn. The lecture addresses
architectural competitions as a useful vehicle for examining the scope and concerns of design
practice – basically outlining the framework for the research work and the reasons behind its
initial formulation.
2) The main part is a one-day masterclass with presentations of the scope and methodology of
a selected number of the participants’ research, each one followed by Andrea Kahn’s
critique. This masterclass will have an intimate form where ideas and problems can be
addressed and exchanged in an open dialogue.
Public lecture “Field Formations”
Mon 21 Feb 2011, 16h
Festauditoriet, F&L, Bülowsvej 17, Frederiksberg
Masterclass “Defining Urban Sites: Theory in Context”
Tue 22 Feb 2011, 9.30h-17.30h
9.30h-13h: intro and 3 paper presentations
14-17.30h, 2-3 paper presentations and final discussion
Room “Byen”, F&L, Rolighedsvej 23, new building, Frederiksberg
Registration
Registration: send an email to lidi@life.ku.dk, give the following information:
1) name 2) affiliation/institution 3) headline of PhD project 4) 200 word abstract of research topic.
5-6 PhD fellows have the opportunity to present their work and get comments, please indicate if you
wish to. Maximum number of participants: 15 PhD students.
Registration deadline: 24 January 2011
Selection of projects for presentation by Andrea Kahn: 1 February 2011
Fee: 1.000 kr / € 134
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Course Requirements
Credits are awarded based on fulfillment of following criteria:
_Reading of course literature and participation in the course, including active contributions to the
discussion.
_For 5-6 selected PhDs: Conference presentation in the course of the students own PhD project and
its links to the course literature. A 60 minutes slot will be allocated to each participant intended for
20 minutes presentation and 40 minutes discussion.
Andrea Kahn
Andrea Kahn has published extensively on the formative roles of site representation and is
internationally recognized for her investigations into various site concepts. With Carol Burns, she is a
contributing editor of the multidisciplinary anthology Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and
Strategies (Routledge, 2005). Engaging the site as a generative construct has been a major subject in
Kahn’s teaching urban design at a wide range of architecture programs in the United States, Europe
and Australia during the last 25 years. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Further, Kahn is a Visiting Critic at
Yale University and former Visiting Professor of Urban Design at City College of New York.
In her recent research Kahn investigates the urban design process and the impact of competitions
with urban aspirations on definitions of urban design as a field of theory and practice. She served as
contributing editor of Constellations: Constructing Urban Practices (Columbia Books on Architecture,
2007) and Drawing/Building/Text (Princeton Architectural Press, 1991). Besides her academic work,
Kahn is founding principal of designCONTENT, a consulting practice focusing on design
communication and presentation strategies for architectural and urban projects.
For more information:
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/users/ak49columbiaedu
http://209.197.82.201/
Organizers at Forest & Landscape
The conference is organized by the Research Group Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, Centre for
Forest & Landscape at Copenhagen University.
Responsibility: Prof. Ellen Braae, Head of Studies
Concept and organization: Lisa Diedrich and Svava Riesto, PhD fellows at the Centre’s Dpt for Parks
and Urban Landscapes, Mads Farsø, PhD fellow at the Centre’s Dpt for Urban and Rural Studies.
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PhD Masterclass
Defining Urban Sites:
Theory in Context
Prof. Andrea Kahn, Columbia University, New York
“At once a concept and a process, urban constellation blurs the line between context and site by
demarcating site interactions across multiple fields of urban operation.” (p. 294 Site Matters)
The Frame
Projects take place over time. The interval between conception and completion (a period that can
stretch to years even in good economic times, if not decades) opens up an operational space for
reflection with regard to city-making processes. Even if nothing seems to be happening on site
(when urban visions get placed “on hold”) existing urban conditions give way to new ones.
The Framework
The five concepts for urban site thinking assembled in “Defining Urban Sites” (Site Matters, 2005)
proposed a preliminary discursive framework to help designers and scholars grapple with the lack of
fixity characterizing urban situations. These concepts provide tools for working in unstable spaces, by
construing site as evolving from within multiple proximate and non-proximate, spatial and temporal
contexts. Formulated through the lens of literary theory, the framework remains intentionally open
to interpretation, respecting and reflecting the ever changing city. To engage the relational condition
of urban sites, it structures site thinking in dialogic terms.
The Work
Depending on the research work of the participating PhDs, possible sites to be examined could
include different types of ‘spaces on hold’ – perhaps actual development locations awaiting design
realization (competition sites in hiatus between design and delivery); or situations categorically
considered (revitalization areas, informal settlements, enclaves, settlement patterns, etc.). If the
participants wish, they could apply the five conversational concepts (Mobile Ground, Site
Construction, Site Reach, Unbound Site and Urban Constellation) as tools to analyze and critically
project the spaces of possibility afforded by specific sites in order to test their utility and examine
their potential range of application to the predictive, and unpredictable, aspects of transformative
urban visions.
Participants are invited to devise “analytic applications” appropriate to illuminating issues of concern
related to their PhD topics, ideally to be explored through graphic as well as textual means.
Introducing the graphic dimension prompts consideration of the interface between verbal and visual
means of site knowledge formation, as well as addresses issues of visualization and communication
as related to depicting urban research findings.
Additionally, through background reading, the Masterclass provides insight into how this approach to
urban site thinking was formulated, and where it fits into a broader theoretical discourse and a larger
history of ideas.
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Course literature
This list includes two sets of required texts: Primary readings (by Andrea Kahn) and Background
readings (Theoretical Foundations texts) and a list of Recommended Reading (with a focus on
representation).
Compulsory reading (Andrea Kahn’s writings)
Kahn, Andrea, Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies (Routledge, New York, 2005)
“Why Site Matters” (with C. Burns) and “Defining Urban Sites”
Kahn, Andrea, “Overlooking: Site as Discrete Object of Desire,” Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender
and the Interdisciplinary, eds. D. McCorquodale, K. Ruedi, S. Wigglesworth (Black Dog Press, 1996)
Kahn, Andrea, “From the Ground Up: Programming the Urban Site,” Harvard Architectural Review
#10 (Princeton Architectural Press, 1998)
Kahn, Andrea, Constellations: Constructing Urban Design Practices, Editor and Contributor, see in
particular “The Project of Urban Design” (introduction) and, recommended, Part 1 (essays by Charlie
Cannon, Sandro Marpillero,Robert Lane and Tony Hiss (Columbia GSAPP Publication, 2007)
Barthes, Roland “From Work to Text”, in Textual Strategies, Perspectives in Pos-Structuralist
Criticism, ed. Josue Hariri, p. 73 -81 (Cornell University Press, 1979)
(Recommended, but not compulsory)
Kahn, Andrea, Imaging New York: Representations and Perceptions of the City, The Urban Lifeworld:
Formation,
Perception Representation, eds. Peter Madsen and Richard Plunz (Routledge, 2001)
Kahn, Andrea, Drawing/Building/Text: Essays in Architectural Theory and Criticism (Princeton
Architectural Press, New York, 1991) Contributing editor, “Introduction” and "Invisible Masks".
Further reading (theoretical background)
de Certeau, Michel, General Introduction, Ch. I-III & IX, The Practice of Everyday Life (University of
California Press, 1984)
Latour, Bruno, “Crisis”, We have never been modern, p. 1 -13 (Harvard University Press, 1993)
Massey, Doreen, “A Global Sense of Place”, Space, Place and Gender (University of Minnesota, 1994)
Young, Iris Marion, “The Ideal of Impartiality and the Civic Public”, Justice and the Politics of
Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990)
*Brenner, Neil, “Restructuring, Rescaling and the Urban Question,” Critical Planning 2009
*Fischler, Raphael “Strategy and History in Professional Practice: Planning as World-making”, in
Spatial Practices: Critical Explorations in Social/Spatial Theory (1995)
Gass, William “Representation and the War for Reality”, in Habitations of the Word, essays by
William Gass (Touchstone Press, 1985)
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