International
seminar
Nov 11th 2020
Welcome | 2.30 PM CET
Elisabetta Rattalino | Fondazione Torino Musei
Introduction | 2.35 PM CET
Francesca Governa | Politecnico di Torino
Section 1 – Urban China and Urban Theories | 2.45 PM CET
Ash Amin | University of Cambridge
Lu Andong | Nanjing University
Brent D. Ryan | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Concluding Remarks - Liu Jian | Tsinghua University
Section 2 – Urban China and Urban Practices | 4.15 PM CET
Bian Lanchun | Tsinghua University
Ann Forsyth | Harvard University
Bernhard Muller | TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA
Concluding Remarks - Michele Bonino | Politecnico di Torino
Live streaming. Please register on Eventbrite.
Event in collaboration with Biennale Tecnologia.
The speakers
FRANCESCA GOVERNA
PhD, is an urban geographer and full professor of economic and political geography at the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning- DIST, Politecnico di Torino. She is part of the China Room, a research group on Urban China, and Deputy Project Manager of FULL – Future Urban Legacy Lab joining architects, engineers, economists, geographers and planners to study the main challenges opened by a rapidly urbanizing world. She is involved in research activities at national and international level on four main issues: local development processes and policies; urban margins and spatial justice; urban development and the rescaling of the urban realm; Urban China and urbanization processes in the Global South. She is the author of about 200 scientific publications and is currently the principal investigator of a three-year research program on Chinese urbanization processes related to the Belt and Road Initiative. She is also the scientific supervisor of a research funded under the Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie Actions on the role of Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa. She has carried on fieldworks in European, North African and Chinese cities. Curator of the exhibition China Goes Urban - The City to Come.
BRENT D. RYAN
Head of the City Design and Development Group and Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His research focuses on the aesthetics and policies of contemporary urban design, particularly with respect to current and pressing issues like deindustrialization and climate change. Professor Ryan’s first book Design After Decline: How America rebuilds shrinking cities, was selected by Planetizen as one of its ten best urban planning books of 2012, and his second book, The Largest Art, was published by MIT Press in 2017.
Professor Ryan is currently conducting research in China, examining the urban design dimensions of emerging shrinking cities, and the urban design futures of new town expansion projects.
Prior to joining MIT, Professor Ryan taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was also Co-Director of the City Design Center.
ANN FORSYTH
Ann Forsyth is the Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University. She is a co-leader of the Healthy Places Design Lab and the New Towns Initiative at Harvard and Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association. Her book on New Towns for the Twenty-First Century: A Guide to Planned Communities Worldwide, co-edited with Richard Peiser, will be published in December 2020.
ASH AMIN
Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge. His recent books include Land of Strangers (2013, Polity Press), Arts of the Political (with Nigel Thrift, Duke University Press, 2013), ​ Releasing the Commons (edited with Philip Howell, Routledge, 2016), Seeing like a City (with Nigel Thrift, Polity Press, 2016), and European Union and Disunion (edited with Philip Lewis, British Academy, 2017). He current work is on ecologies of mental health in Shanghai and Delhi, on grammars of the urban (with Michele Lancione), and on post-identity politics.
LIU JIAN
She received her Bachelor degree in Architecture, Master and Doctor degree in Urban Planning from Tsinghua University. She is now Vice Dean and Tenured Associate Professor at the School of Architecture (Tsinghua University) and Managing Chief-Editor of China City Planning Review. She was Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard University (US), visiting scholar at the Observatoir d'Architecture de la Chine (France) and the University of British Columbia (Canada). She acts as professor, researcher and city planner, with particular interests on town and rural planning, urban regeneration, and international comparative studies. She publishes both domestically and overseas and is active in both national and international academic networks. She chairs and participates to practical projects of urban planning in a number of Chinese cities and has been rewarded with both national and ministerial prizes. Co-curator of the exhibition China Goes Urban - The City to Come.
LU ANDONG
Professor in Architecture and Head of Department of Architecture, Nanjing University. He completed PhD at the University of Cambridge, and was a Fellow of Wolfson College. He is a board member of the Committee of Urban Design of the Architectural Society of China and the Committee of Public Space of the International Union of Architects (UIA). He has published widely in academic journals and acted as guest-editor for Architectural Design (John Wiley) and Architectural Journal (Architectural Society of China). He co-edited with François Penz the Urban Cinematics (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and with Wowo Ding and Arie Graafland the Cities in Transition (NAi010 Press, 2015). He is the architect of the China Pavilion at the 2018 London Design Biennale and master planner of the Nanjing UNESCO City of Literature.
BIAN LANCHUN
Professor of Urban design & Urban Conservation, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University.
Deputy Director of Urban Design Academic Committee of China Urban Planning Society
Member of the Expert Advisory Group of the Committee of Beijing Historical and Cultural Cities
He has been engaged in teaching, research and practice of urban planning and urban design for a long time. He participated in the revision of Beijing's urban spatial development strategic plan and urban master plan in 2003-2004, he participated in Tianjin's urban spatial development strategic plan. He presided over the urban design research of Beijing's capital core area and the Conservation planning of Shichahai Historic and cultural Conservation area of Beijing, and the International Urban Design Competition of Tongzhou Sub-Center of Beijing, and won the winning scheme.
BERNHARD MULLER
Senior professor at TU Dresden. Until mid 2019, he was the Director of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) and Professor for Spatial Development at the Technische Universität Dresden. He has a doctoral degree in Geography from the University of Mainz, and completed his habilitation in urban and regional planning and development at the University of Hanover. He received a honorary doctoral degree from the Slovak University of Technology. Bernhard Müller is an academician of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), the Saxonian Academy of Sciences (SAW), the German Academy for Spatial Development (ARL), and the Serbian Academy of Engineering Sciences (AESS). His professional interests are in sustainable urban and regional development.
MICHELE BONINO
Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Vice Rector for Relations with China at the Politecnico di Torino. He is a member of the China Room research center and, previously, was the Director of the Master of Science in Architecture Construction City (2015 to 2018).
He was a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University (Beijing 2013 and 2014) and a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Boston 2016).
For Polito he is leading the architectural design of the visitor center for the XXIV Olympic Winter Games (Beijing 2022, under construction). With Sun Yimin, he was the Academic Curator of the 2019 Bi-City Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.
Among his recent books, The City after Chinese New Towns (Birkhäuser 2019, with F. Governa, M.P. Repellino, A. Sampieri) and Beijing Danwei. Industrial Heritage and the Contemporary City(Jovis 2016, with F. De Pieri). Curator of the exhibition China Goes Urban - The City to Come.
