Panel #2

Re-framing the Public Space through Artistic and Documentary Photography on Architecture

This panel will discuss how Photography on Architecture may constitute sophisticated visual elements of the subjective gaze of a particular author, used to critically read in a meaningful manner various aspects of contemporary realities. From the sphere of architecture, art and documentary photography we will focus on diverse authors which relate to the subject and practice of architecture, understood as a broad concept and a social space. 
We are interested in authors whose photography may combine diverse approaches and that have public space and architecture as their subject, whose work, in different ways, denotes a will to go beyond the traditional photography of architecture. This may include photography incorporating people (appropriation of spaces by the public) and focusing on direct experience on the urban space and, on the other hand, exploring different artistic expressions and communication strategies; and architectural photography where “different gazes” may be present and are able to bring a new rapport to the understanding of the universe and practice of photography and contemporary architecture. Some cases in point, besides others, are for example Helen Binet, Philippe Ruault, Paolo Rosselli, Cristobal Palma, Armin Linke or Bas Prince.
All these different "architectural gazes" allow to understand city space as a living organism, a rich and multifaceted reality defined by several subjective experiences that continuously shape different and overlapping cultures and societies, allowing to address questions as, for example, how photography may provoke self-reflections of the world triggering imagination and memory of places in new ways. Other matters of interest that will be discussed will allow to question in what extent the characterization of actual historical transformations occurring in contemporary cities and territories may contribute for enhancing self-reflexive attitudes of citizens in relation to their practices of appropriation of the public space. 

Some issues of interest that can be taken on board, but not limited to, are: 
- How photography may set forward the idea of an architecture, changing our on-site perception and even turning it into a projected vision in space;
- What photography tells us about the world we inhabit from the most sophisticated to the most conventional and banal aspect of everyday life;
- The relation between photography and architecture as a creative process that brings to light new ways of understanding the urban space;
- How does photography and / or images expand the practice of architecture or theory as instruments of thought and imagination;
- How can image and/or photograph be used as critical and inquisitive tools in architecture;
- The relationship between photographer and architecture;
- How can photography be used as a design tool combined with drawing for architects to create spaces;
-  How photography can be used for communicating the way past architecture and city forms relate or confront present architectural programs and public spaces and their contemporary public appropriation; 
- Crossing borders among cultural differences, values and desires related to specific characteristics of place and time;
- Urban, suburban, and transgenic territories.
- Intersections between the practice and discipline of architecture and art;
- Connection between the universe of images with both architecture and art;
- How can images expand the practice and theory of architecture beyond the limitations of their physical and constructive materiality;

Keynote speaker Bas Princen
Table moderated by Iñaki Bergera