UCL Urban Laboratory

Urban Laboratory will close from tomorrow for Christmas and New Year. We'll reopen for 2025 on 02 January 2025. We'd like to wish all of our students, staff, alumni and friends a happy and restful festive break. We look forward to seeing you all in 2025!

The Memory Workshop Open Days series continues at UCL Urban Room on Wednesday 11 December. Spencer Samuel, who delivered our recent studio podcasting workshop, leads a fun and interactive post-processing workshop. Sign up to learn about using our Memory Workshop facilities to archive, podcast and more. 📍 Urban Room, 1 Pool Street 🗓️ 16:00–19:00, Wednesday 11 December Reserve your place now: https://lnkd.in/e-x7xZTb

This Wednesday: The Zone: an Alternative History of Paris Writer, editor and curator Justinien Tribillon shares insights from his recent book 'The Zone: an Alternative History of Paris', which takes the reader on a tour of an eponymous Parisian hinterland. The site of dreams and nightmares, from Van Gogh’s paintings to the cinematic violence of La Haine, the Zone, so often misunderstood, is the key to understanding today’s Paris, and even France itself. With respondent Jacob Paskins (UCL Art History). 📍 Room G01 (Sir Peter Hall Room), The Bartlett School of Planning UCL 🗓️ 17:30, Wednesday 11 December https://lnkd.in/eQpnDcrQ

This Thursday 05 December, join us at UCL Urban Room for the launch of the new National HIV Story Trust project - HIVstory. As part of Urban Lab's Memory Workshop Open Days series, explore the complex and moving history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the stories that have shaped our understanding of this important issue. This in-person event promises to be a memorable experience filled with insightful discussions and the launch of a dedicated website and touring exhibtion. Don't miss out on this opportunity to be a part of HIVstory. This project is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. 🗓️ 17:00–20:00, Thursday 05 December 📍UCL East, One Pool Street https://lnkd.in/eiEZuBVC

3-4 competitive student researcher-led positions are available for PhD students currently enrolled at UCL to work on The Reach Alliance-supported project, "Blind Spot: Enabling Gender-Inclusive Climate Action in Peri-Urban Regions in India." This two-year interdisciplinary project, led by Dr. Lakshmi Rajendran from The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo from UCL Department of Geography/the Institute of Advanced Studies, addresses critical issues around climate resilience, gender inequality, and social justice affecting marginalised women in India's peri-urban regions. Reach is an engaging extracurricular opportunity designed for dedicated students. It involves creating a case study over the course of an academic year, which includes a field trip, followed by activities to share and discuss the findings after the case study is published. Participants in the Reach programme become part of a like-minded community across partner universities and have the opportunity to attend conferences worldwide. View the advertisement to learn more about this opportunity. The deadline for applications is Saturday 30 November.

The Memory Workshop series continues this week: The Imaginative Relationship Between the Archive and Documentary Filmmaking Practices Archival materials such as films, photographs, oral histories and, objects possess a material, affective and sensory dimension that brims with possibility. Far from being inert objects only used as a simple representation of the past, archives are 'active' in a myriad of ways, creating an imaginative link between the past and present. In this session, Caterina Sartori and Ishbel Tunnadine will lead participants to reflect on the relationship between documentary filmmaking and the archive. They will facilitate discussions about approaches, aesthetics, methods, ethics and access, using examples drawn from a wide range of documentary and experimental films that incorporate / rework / interpret archival materials. 🗓️ Wednesday 27 November 📍 16:00–19:00, UCL Urban Room, 1 Pool Street https://lnkd.in/eiEZuBVC

City-making is a by-product of racial capitalism. Yet the spatial implications of racialisation processes remain at the margins of the mainstream of the built environment professional’s education. In the context of exacerbated settler colonial violence, race riots in the UK and the rise of fascist regimes across the globe, we need to question and retool educational practices to understand, question and dismantle the systems that are deepening spatial violence and racism in multiple forms. Join UCL Urban Lab on Wednesday 04 December for a roundtable that brings together five of the co-authors of The Bartlett’s cross-faculty ‘Race’ and Space curriculum - Dr Kamna Patel (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL), Dr Tania Sengupta and Dr Adam Walls (The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London), Prof Yasminah Beebeejaun (The Bartlett School of Planning UCL), and chair Prof Catalina Ortiz (Director of UCL Urban Laboratory). Due to popular demand, this sold out event has now been moved to a larger room and a limited number of additional spaces are available. 16:15, Wednesday 04 December Room 6.02, 22 Gordon Street https://lnkd.in/exvNQ5Nv

The 15th Dak'Art, Biennale de Dakar launched last week, running until Saturday 07 December, and Urban Lab's Dr Kara Blackmore is co-curating this year's Associated Curators exhibition as part of the wider event. 'We Will Stop When the Earth Roars' is an eco-feminist commentary on the ecological and social effects of consumerism, development, extractivism and agriculture, combining perspectives of rage with artistic approaches to care and grief tending, paying particular attention to how natural fibres and botanical histories can respond to narratives of catastrophe and violence. One of the exhibitors, Wolff Architects Ltd., will bring their installation, 'Summer Flowers', to UCL Urban Room in January 2025. Watch an interview with Dr Blackmore here: https://lnkd.in/e7GggU3Q

The Memory Workshop Open Days: Ethics of co-production with Kara Blackmore Wednesday, November 20, UCL Urban Room The Urban Room and Memory Workshop are invested in collaborative co-production for research, archiving, and exhibition making. This type of work is often challenging and requires a certain ethical framework to ensure that memories relating to urban, cultural, or political injustices are meaningfully understood. In this session Dr Kara Blackmore will present the new ethics framework for the Memory Workshop. She will share her experiences as Curator with four different collaborations done to date with the Urban Room. Ethics statements and risk assessments will be shared in detail to empower students, artists, academics, and community organisers interested in doing work together. Register free to attend: https://lnkd.in/esnAzSDM

ICYMI: In October, Urban Lab hosted a panel discussion on how genocide in Gaza is accompanied by urbicide: the destruction of physical urban space and the erasure of social networks, communal spaces and residents' collective memory. Speakers Dr Nurhan Abujidi (Smart Urban Redesign Research Centre at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences), Abir Saksouk (Public Works Studio), Dr Ammar Azzouz (Oxford Uni) and Dr Sana Murrani Plymouth University), with chairs Catalina Ortiz and Muzna Al-Masri, explored what can be learned about home and the urban from the calamity in Gaza, and other experiences of urbicide in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Together they traced experiences of resistance to spacio-cide, and attempts at life and place-making to allow for the remaking, revival and restoration of urban life and home. Now, you can rewatch the full event on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/et_cEyqP