June 10th, 2011
On Wednesday 28th September, the Routes project invited to an open symposium on roads and landscapes at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Antoine Picon from Harvard and Hans Dienel from TU Berlin lectured on roads, landscapes, and their entanglement, and researchers from the Routes project presented their studies. Thanks to speakers and audience for a stimulating day!
PROGRAM - THE END OF THE ROAD
10.00 Welcome
10.15 Antoine Picon (Harvard University): “Roads and Landscape: The Narrative Dimension”
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Mari Hvattum (AHO): “Routes, Roads and Landscapes”
11.45 Movements through the Landscape: Routes project presentations by Brita Brenna/Torild Gjesvik/Marie-Theres Fojuth/Kristina Skåden
Questions and discussion
12.30 Lunch
13.30 Sverker Sörlin (KTH Stockholm): “Roadside Art(iculations): Highways and the Branding of Landscapes”
14.15 Speed, Flow and Sight: Routes project presentations by Even Smith Wergeland/Beate Elvebakk/Janike Kampevold Larsen/Lars Frers
14.45 Coffee break
15.00 Hans-Liudger Dienel (TU Berlin): “The Art of the Long View”
Questions and discussion
16.00 End
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Antoine Picon is a historian of technology and professor at Harvard University. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. His French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (1988; English translation, 1992) is a synthetic study of the disciplinary “deep structures” of architecture, garden design, and engineering in the eighteenth century, and their transformations as new issues of territorial management and infrastructure-systems planning were confronted. Whereas Claude Perrault (1613-1688) ou la Curiosité d’un classique (1988) traces the origin of these changes at the end of the seventeenth century, L’Invention de l’Ingénieur Moderne, L’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851 (1992) envisages their full development from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1850s. Picon has also worked on the relations between society, technology and utopia. This is in particular the theme of Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie (2002), a detailed study of the Saint-Simonian movement that played a seminal role in the emergence of industrial modernity. Picon’s most recent book, Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Profession (2010) offers a comprehensive overview and discussion of the changes brought by the computer to the theory and practice of architecture.
Sverker Sörlin is an intellectual historian and professor of environmental history at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He has published extensively on issues such as nationalism, history of science, and environmental history. Of particular interest to the Routes project is his work on the modern concept of nature, such as Naturkontraktet: Om naturumgängets idéhistoria (1991) and Friluftshistoria – Från “härdande friluftslif” till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik, w/Klas Sandell 2000/ 2008). Sörlin has also published significant works on 18th century scientific expeditions, such as the book Linné och hans apostlar, (w/ Otto Fagerstedt, 2004) as well as Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, w/Michael T. Bravo, 2002).
Hans Liudger Dienel is a historian, specializing in the history of technology and infrastructure. Dienel is professor at the Technische Universität Berlin, leading Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft. His publications include Herrschaft über die Natur? Das Naturverständnis deutscher Ingenieure 1871–1914 (1992), Der Optimismus der Ingenieure. Triumph der Technik in der Krise der Moderne um 1900 (1998), Stadt und Verkehr. Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte (2006), among many other books and articles. Professor Dienel leads the research network T2M, The International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (http://t2m.org/)
