InfraNet Lab is pleased to announce that we will be hosting a conference entitled ‘Fourth Nature: Mediated Landscapes’ at the University of Waterloo, School of Architecture, in Cambridge, ON, this Friday, Feb. 4th and Saturday, Feb. 5th. The conference brings together scholars and practitioners working at the disciplinary intersection of architecture, infrastructure, landscape and environment to present research and projects that propose emerging models for understanding ‘nature’, in its various scales and guises, in the 21st century. From the territorial to the nano-scale, mutant environments which fuse natural and artificial, technologic and infrastructural have been proliferating. Natures are monitored and controlled, ecologies are amplified or manufactured and interior landscapes are conditioned, with the intent of augmenting performance, controlling the flow of resources, monitoring data or redressing environmental imbalances. In the current scenario, the dialectic is no longer nature versus city, or natural versus artificial, but positions within a spectrum of mediation and manipulation of nature, landscape and built environment.
Speakers include:
Keynote
François Roche (R&Sie(n))
Fourth Natures: New Contexts
Cary Wolfe (Rice University, Series Editor of Posthumanities )
Alessandra Ponte (Universite de Montreal)
Christine Macy (Dalhousie University)
Andy Payne (University of Toronto) (Moderator)
Fourth Natures: New Disciplines
Lydia Kallipoliti (Cooper Union, Columbia University, Director of Ecoredux)
John J. May (UCLA and University of Toronto, Millions of Moving Parts)
John McMinn (University of Waterloo) ( Moderator)
Fourth Natures: New Practices
Martin Felsen (Illinois Institute of Technology, Archeworks, Director of UrbanLab)
Janette Kim ( Columbia University, Director of Urban Landscape Lab)
Sean Lally (University of Illinois at Chicago, Director of WEATHERS)
Liat Margolis (University of Toronto) ( Moderator)
Detailed information about the conference schedule and speakers can be found at: http://www.architecture.uwaterloo.ca/fourthnatures/