The Annual GSD DDes Conference: “[RE]FORM: New Investigations in Urban Form” will take place on Friday, September 14th at the Harvard Graduate School of Design .

[Re]FORM: New Investigations in Urban Form aims to reposition the discourse of urban form within contemporary urban theory. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s seminal text Urban Form (1970), this conference aspires to provoke new investigations and debates on urban form and its relevance in contemporary urbanizations. Specifically, by acknowledging the fluctuating conditions of political, economic, and technological contexts and practices, this conference interrogates the meanings of “form” and its role in contemporary urbanization through the agency of the design disciplines, and gauges such discourses against the debates on urban theory situated within contemporary urban conditions and transitions.

The objectives of this conference are threefold: [1] Reconstructing the Agency of Form aspires to rehabilitate the instrumentality of form in design disciplines and its relevance in contemporary urban environment through experimental representations, narratives and design strategies. [2] Rethinking the Discourse attempts to reconstruct the discursive agency of urban form through the re-conceptualization of theoretical categories of contemporary urban knowledge. [3] Future Transformation of Urban Form seeks to build an inter-scalar approach for critical examination of emerging urban practices that challenges and reshapes notions of urban form along with its role in the processes of urbanization taking place across geographies.

The conference is sponsored in part by the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities.

Read more here.