Designing Place in a Changing World

Presented by TOPOS LAB: advancing place research The Designing Place in a Changing World symposium examines the philosophical, cultural, material, and political conditions through which places are experienced and transformed in times of rapid transformations. It considers design as a significant mode of engagement with place, encompassing the production of spatial, material, visual, technological, and social environments. Place has been a sustained concern across philosophy, geography, architecture, anthropology, cultural studies, and design. It encompasses questions of situatedness, embodiment, identity, memory, belonging, dwelling, territory, and relations between human and more-than-human worlds. Contemporary conditions of environmental change, technological development, urban transformation, displacement, and political contestation raise further questions concerning how place is understood and produced. The symposium provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars and practitioners working across design, philosophy, architecture, geography, urbanism, anthropology, ethnography, environmental humanities, cultural studies, and related fields. Contributions may address theoretical, historical, empirical, methodological, or practice-based questions concerning the relationship between place and design.