kruh autumn 2015 : Caroline Bos - Spatial planning process

Caroline Bos / UNStudio

Networks, knowledge sharing and stakeholders in spatial planning processes

Thursday 1. October 2015, 19:30 PM
Světozor cinema, Vodičkova street 41, Prague

Traditional distinctions between categories, typologies, and scales are becoming more blurred; city-nature, public-private, and global-local, cultural-commercial… everything is mixed. Therefore, a network- and process-based approach to planning, designing and building is increasingly vital, in which knowledge flows freely and boundlessly between stakeholders. The realization of contemporary places and spaces entails a policy-aware, flexible, spatially-technical innovative, networked approach, centering on knowledge.
UNStudio identifies knowledge as the central element of being smart about cities. A paradigm has been set by social networking firms who have moved from an old economy to a far more innovative economy which celebrates communication, open exchange and co-creation. Believing that architecture can benefit greatly from adopting such an approach, UNStudio is looking for ways to transform into an open knowledge-based practice. But how does this affect the professional position of the people active within these networks, and particularly the position of women?
In a paper co-written with Tanja Kullack for the 1st Conference on Architecture and Gender held in Seville in 2014 Caroline Bos explored how the changing nature of the practice of architecture from a system of exclusion in the form of a professional, institutionally defined and strictly contained social stratum, towards a network practice could have a positive influence on raising the equality of women in the profession. Now, for Caroline’s upcoming lecture in Prague, she would like to address this issue in relation to her experiences with UNStudio.
Caroline Bos studied History of Art at Birkbeck College of the University of London and Urban and Regional Planning at the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht. In 1988 she co-founded Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau with the architect Ben van Berkel, extending her theoretical and writing projects to the practice of architecture. Realized projects include the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen and the Moebius house.
In 1998 Caroline Bos co-founded UNStudio (United Net). UNStudio presents itself as a network of specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure. Current urban development projects include the restructuring of the station area of Arnhem, the mixed-use Raffles City in Hangzhou, a masterplan for Basauri, and the design and restructuring of the Harbour Ponte Parodi in Genoa.
Caroline Bos has taught as a guest lecturer at Princeton University, the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Academy of Architecture in Arnhem. In 2012 she was awarded an Honorary Professorship at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. Central to her teaching is the inclusive approach of architectural works integrating virtual and material organization and engineering constructions.

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