International Keio Institute for Architecture and Urbanism - IKI
EIC-IKI 2O1O Symposium
18 December 2O1O@Keio University
Teaching and Learning with Global South
Environmental, Urban and Architectural Design Education for a Just World
18. December 2010, Tokyo
IKI Symposium brings together a number of distinguished academics and practitioners in various fields associated with production of space, from East, South-East and South Asia and Africa to discuss the present situation, the trends, and the likely and desirable futures in environmental, architectural and urban design education in the decades to come.
The topic of IKI Symposium is framed by themes everyone is speaking about. The majority of those themes originate from a variety of crisis that define the times we are living in - from global economic crisis and global financial crisis, via global environmental crisis and crisis of resources to global military crisis etc., all of which Erich Fromm has, timely, in 1976, (in To Have or To Be?) summed up as – a decisive crisis. What makes our moment dramatically different from the seventies comes from the fact that Fromm’s and similar calls were never taken seriously. What also makes our moment different is the global character of the crisis. We do live in the times of fully-fledged globalisation and an accompanying awareness that new thinking and new practices to address the problems (many of which have been caused by inaction and preservation of dominant development doctrines) are needed urgently. The simultaneity of crisis and that urgency are setting tight deadlines.
Today, many think about responses to that threatening global condition. But, as ever, a clear pattern of power emerges from those responses. It exposes a predictable set of base values from which they originate and which point, yet again, at their decidedly ‘first world’ thinking and expectation of continuing one-way flow of information and knowledge – from “West” to the Rest.
IKI Symposium repeats those same, burning questions – but, it addresses the parts of the world which are rarely asked. It brings together the representatives of that usually silent (or - silenced world), the latest euphemism for which is Global South. The very difference which East Asia, South East Asia, South Asia and Africa bring to discussion, together with a number of concrete examples of practices and ideas which differ form the dominating “mainstream”, raise hope that there are viable alternatives to current, unsustainable practices. The triple emphasis of the Symposium is on:
- dialectics of processes and practices of teaching and learning,
- continuity of education and practice, as places and activities of production and dissemination of knowledge, and
- that (as good design always does), when thinking about future, we can and have to think about a better world.
Oriz convincingly argued how, “when we speak about a global economy, we have in mind one single structure, underlying economic exchange in any place on the planet. …The same can be said of the technological sphere: it is marked by the unity of technologies – computer, satellites, electric or nuclear energy. But, would that make sense, understanding the cultural theme in the same way? Could we speak of ‘one’ global culture, or ‘one’ global identity in the same manner we consider the economic and technological levels?”
In answer to his own, rhetorical question, Ortiz, of course, says: “Surely not...”
Architecture and urbanism are placed exactly at that neuralgic spot where measurable and non-measurable overlap, where global and local interact, where economic, social and environmental touch, meet, overlap, or - clash. They are judged both from global, and local perspectives.
The questions with which we intend open IKI Symposium include:
- what our disciplines can and what they have to do in order to responsibly address those challenges?
- what are the ways and roles of design education and practice in that?
- what are the best existing practices of production and dissemination of knowledge? and
- which directions may be right to take us from present situation towards a better future?
It is our hope that different cultural backgrounds of the participants are going to bring enough of difference in responses and opinions to generate lively and high-quality discussion.
D.R.
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