This conference is part of the two-day series “Celebrating the City,” taking place May 10–11. Learn more about “Reading the City | Leggere la città,” the second event in the series.

Cities, like any other forms of human settlements and like works of art, are in constant flux, a process of shaping and reshaping, of being erased, demolished, newly designed, renovated, and preserved. Like a canvas on which marks of artistic activities—lines, scratches, stains of colors, and spots—are visually documented, the urban landscapes accumulate and display through their particular structures, planning, architecture, parks and public monuments, histories of urban creativity, and imagined landscapes of inhabitants. Thus urban spaces could be read through both the plethora of built substances that turns a space into a place and the markers of remembering and forgetting. Sites epitomize durations and changes and embody a sense of time.

This conference gathers several academics and intellectuals to discuss the city as a remembered and constructed entity—an architectural tangible artifact and a product of our thoughts. In its core are the stories and histories of the citizens of cities as reflected, or rather imprinted, on the formation of the city’s urban spaces and its delicate receptive surfaces.

Participants include: architectural historian Esra Akcan (Cornell University); art historian Dario Gamboni (University of Geneva); architectural theoretician and journalist Niklas Maak (FAZ Germany); art historian Tanja Michalsky (Bibliotheca Hertziana Rome); architect Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths, University of London); and architect Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia University).

Download a PDF of the event program.

This conference, to be presented on Zoom, is free and open to the public. The start time is 3:00pm Central European Time (9:00am Eastern Time).

The City: Traces of Urban Memories is co-sponsored by the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History.