CFP - AAG 2008 - EXPERIENCING URBAN AESTHETICS

Please forward widely, apologies for cross-posting - Call for papers: Annual AAG meeting in Boston, Massachusetts April 15-19, 2008 EXPERIENCING URBAN AESTHETICS: I - Theorizing encounters in designed urban spaces II - Methods for researching experiences in designed urban spaces Organizers: Gillian Rose (Open University), Monica Degen (Brunel University) Chair: Begum Basdas (Open University) An increased preoccupation with the visual impact of places has led to an explicit focus on and use of urban design in the redevelopment of urban centres. The intention of aesthetic intervention into urban space is to alter the experience of that space. Debates on this aesthetization of the urban environment have tended to portray those using these spaces as passively responding to urban design stimuli. However, there is clearly a diversity of fluid and overlapping practices and experiences involved when people interact with the materiality of the city. In the daily uses of these designed environments, people may engage, ignore, resist or subvert them. In this session we are interested in thinking through the diversity of embodied visual and sensuous encounters we have with the built environment. In particular we invite papers that either theorize the complex and diverse engagements that people have in designed spaces or papers that develop methods for researching how we experience the city. Expressions of interest and/or abstracts (250 words of less) should be sent by October 22nd to Gillian Rose: g.rose@open.ac.uk or Monica Degen: monica.degen@brunel.ac.uk.