City/State workshop

City/State Unit is an independent research and design unit operating within the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jeruzalem, Israel.

City-Edge | Beijing, 2007
City-Edge | Beijing, 2007

The unit was established with the goal of mobilizing the design community to engage in multidisciplinary research into the unique spatial conditions of Israel and the consequences of global trends on these local conditions. The unit consists of a core staff of architects and landscape architects who cooperates with professionals from other fields on specific research projects.

City/State Unit is aimed at educating architecture students to excellence in both research and practice; establishing a platform for public debate; and connecting with official planning authorities and private organizations engaged in large scale projects.
The City/State Unit is supported by the Horowitz fund and by the Yehuda Tamir fund.

Workshops

The City/State Unit has initiated a series of workshops, planned to take place twice a year which are aimed at investigating specific topics which relate to large scale planning. Through the week long workshop, the students, accompanied by guest tutors from abroad and their teachers, research and develop strategies to address concrete and actual planning issues.

City/State aims to achieve certain goals through the workshop framework: a) creating a multi-national platform for the exchange of knowledge; b) offering real solutions to real planning problems in Israel and abroad; c) exposing the public to fresh opinions and research and d) promoting discussion of large scale planning operations and methodology.

City-Edge | Beijing, 2007
City-Edge | Beijing, 2007

What can we learn from China?

The City/State Unit in the Architecture department in Bezalel is pleased to invite Belgian researcher and architecture critique Bert de Muynck and movingcities to conduct a workshop as a possible way of re-thinking the future of dense urban and peri-urban mass. Dealing with both Europe and south-east Asia in his research, Mr. de Muynck is to define through comparison the end image of the Israeli spatial condition and possible operations that can introduce difference and quality into the system.

Workshop | research, strategies and projection

A one week workshop has been set-up to explore the mechanisms driving the development of the Chinese city. Structured into three stages, the workshop will focus on research, development of scenario’s and projection of this in-situ urban-rural scenario.

Workshop | methodology

Throughout the following weeks movingcities will develop some ideas, thoughts and analysis that go deeper into the understanding of the development of Chinese cities. As such it will try to understand and present the mechanisms that boost the urban growth in China and debate its relevance for other urban contexts.

This mechanisms will serve as the basis on which the City/State workshop will continue to work and test is relevance, possibilities and adjustments within the context of Israel’s urban development.

Workshop | interventions

Together with Mónica Carriço and Dan Handel & Yonatan Cohen from the city/state unit movingcities gave the introduction to the workshop on February 21, 2008. We divided the students in four groups, and each group will fill the territory between Tel Aviv and Herzliya through one specific type of intervention borrowed from the Chinese condition. These intervention are;

Initial thoughts

Interviews

Workshop | images

Workshop | updates

Project Website

Please keep on eye on this page, the City/State Unit Blog and the City/State Unit website to be updated about the further development of the workshop.

Made possible by

Made possible by through financial support provided by the Bezalel Academy, City/State Unit and the Flemish Government, Ministry of Culture

(back)

via via

spatial agency:
Established in 2007 by Bert de Muynck and Mónica Carriço, movingcities is a think tank based in Beijing Shanghai whose work focuses on how the practices of architecture and urbanism affect the city.

Their name is a reaction to the influential 'Shrinking Cities' project, which they critiqued for an over emphasis on just one part of a larger phenomenon. In contrast they see contemporary urbanity as being in constant flux and speak of city-regions that incorporate shrinking and expanding, rural and urban.

Their work takes the form of projects, writings and collaborations as well as interviews. (...)

Their projects take the form of embedded research on the city, usually carried out in collaboration with other architects."

creative cities:
Mov­ing­Cit­ies is an inde­pend­ent research organ­iz­a­tion based in China

archiblog:
MovingCities is a blog investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. MovingCities features urban research, critical architectural investigations and publications. MovingCities operates from Beijing Shanghai, China.

snowball architecture:
Bert de Muynck is the other half of MovingCities, a Shanghai based duo of “shrinks in the urban debate” as him and his partner Mónica Carriço like to describe their practice. MovingCities are also the curators of Snowball Shanghai – Event on Finnish Architecture to be organised in Shanghai this March.