The two research platforms Urban Arena (Lund University) and SLU Urban Futures (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) are joining forces during Lund’s Sustainability Week in April 2019. Together they arrange a place where practice meets academia, for practitioners and practice-oriented researchers to exhibit their work, finished or in progress, tackling urban sustainability in manifold ways.
– There will be an exhibition of selected architecture, landscape and urbanism projects submitted by professionals, and research works proposed by academics. We want to shed light on burning topics in urban sustainability, formulate concrete feedback on critical questions, offer inspiring findings and stimulate fruitful exchanges between practice and academia, says Lisa Dietrich, program director of SLU Urban Futures.
Floor talks
During the Floor Talks of the Urban Forum | Practice meets Academia practitioners and researchers engage in discussions with each other to refine issues of societal importance for practice and academia. 15 project authors will engage with the audience (in English or Swedish) to bring light to burning questions, critical aspects, inspiring findings, in a collegial atmosphere tackling urban sustainability in manifold ways.
- The Floor Talks is a new format for knowledge sharing and development, which challenges the separation between practice and academia. We believe that such separation is problematic, because it obstructs innovation and implementation of visionary prospects. With the Floor Talks we instigate a pragmatic space where ideas can be exchanged and tested; a space that fosters immediate communication and feedback, but also visual exposition and outreach for the participants, says Per-Johan Dahl, associate professor at Department of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Lund.
Books in Discussion
On Wednesday April 10 Books in Discussion invites to explore the role of books in current discourse. The event gathers an international panel of practitioners and academics, all engaged in the design of sustainable cities, to present and discuss their recently published books. Why books today, in digital times and proliferating web-based publishing? What motivates professionals and academics to publish their urban work in books? Selected book authors and editors present their publications shortly while opening for discussion with the audience, culminating in a final presentation by atelier le balto’s new monography Escales.