Trade Show Talk with Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu
Tuesday 11th February 2014, 6.30 - 8.30 pm
Trade Show Talk with Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu (aaa, Paris)
Tuesday 11th February 2014, 6.30 - 8.30 pm
At Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane
Birmingham B9 4AR
Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu will introduce R-Urban, a bottom-up urban development project that focuses on local economical and ecological cycles, with the ambition to strengthen urban resilience and alternative ways of living in a city.
R-Urban is a bottom-up strategy initiated by aaa to enhance urban resilience capacity by introducing a network of resident-run facilities which create complementarities between key fields of everyday activities (economy, housing, urban agriculture, culture). R-Urban initiates locally closed ecological cycles that will support the emergence of alternative models of living, producing and consuming between the urban and the rural.
To overcome the current crises (climate, resources, economic, demographic), we must, as philosopher Andre Gorz says, ‘produce what we consume and consume what we produce’. This balance between production and consumption through local sustainable sourcing cannot occur without changes in the way we live. R-Urban suggests and introduces collaborative practices which support each other through local networks and form flows, networks and circuits of production and consumption.
Doina Petrescu is a Professor of Architecture and Design Activism at the University of Sheffield and the other co-founder of atelier d’architecture autogérée. Her research focuses on gender and space in contemporary society as well as participation in architecture. She is the editor of Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (2007) and co-editor of Architecture and Participation (2005), Urban Act (2007), Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures (2009), and Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices Within and Across (2010). Constantin Petcou is a Paris-based architect whose work stresses the intersection between architecture, urbanism, and semiotics. He is a co-founder of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) and has co-edited Urban Act: A Handbook for Alternative Practice (2007) and Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices Within and Across (2010).