Call for Projects: Urban Transcripts
Rome: The Accidental City
Rome, Italy
September 30 2011
Call for Projects: Rome, The Accidental City
Urban Transcripts 2011
opening 09.05.2011
deadline for registrations of interest 30.09.2011
deadline for the reception of project submissions 07.10.2011
Urban Transcripts was borne out of an interest to create a new tool through which to explore cities in a participatory and cross-disciplinary way. It was initiated in 2010 as a series of annual
events, such as exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and publications, centred around a specific agenda every year, addressing issues in a particular city, or transversal themes
common to a number of different cities. Through an annual call-for-projects open to the wider public, Urban Transcripts solicits projects in a range of disciplines, from architecture and urban design to film and social research, in a variety of critical and creative media. Our series of events and actions is composed of an extensive selection of the projects submitted, curated by a designated committee. In this way, we are creating a unique platform for the advancement of a body of work and knowledge dealing with the urban phenomenon.
Theme of Urban Transcripts 2011
Beyond an imagery of the unchanged and unchangeable old town, the realities of the city of Rome finely weave themselves through an everlasting conflict between the remote past, the
recent yesterday, and the present. An exploration of Rome as an emergent territory reveals a vibrant congregation of “incidental” urban products: informal neighbourhoods resulting from
spontaneous development, modernist experiments in (re)housing society, ruins of a history that tourism has forgotten, bold transportation infrastructure piercing through the city's
residential fabric, urban voids or even unspoilt countryside that escaped ‘development’, all strikingly interlaced between the threads of time, in the junctures and overlaps between
planned form and plan-resistant city. They appear like parts of an accidental city: a city of the unexpected contrasts in built forms and urban landscapes, a city continuously redefined by its
citizens’ spontaneous appropriation of space, a city of the unpredictable play between people, space and time.
We invite you to explore the accident(al) in the city of Rome: the accident(al) which happens over time and transforms the 'essence' of the city that would otherwise remain unchanged, the
accident(al) which adds surprise and complexity to our reality and challenges our understanding of the city, the accident(al) which generates the energy to recreate and reshape
the city. Urban Transcripts 2011 is calling for projects in the visual arts, theory and research, architecture and urban design, which engage in critical and creative approaches with this theme and the problematics it evokes.
For more information, please visit http://www.urbantranscripts.org/, or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Brian Rosa
PhD Researcher, Human Geography
School of Environment and Development
University of Manchester
http://brianrosa.net/