DPU SummerLab 2014 series
Medellin - Dublin - Beirut - London

London, UK
DEADLINE | July 14th 2014
DPU - Bartlett Development Planning Unit 
UCL - University College of London 

DPU SummerlLab
dpusummerLab was born out of the MSc Building & Urban Design in Development (BUDD) course in 2009 and expanded in 2010 to a wider Bartlett Development Planning Unit initiative. Drawing on the progressive action-research and practice-based ethos of the DPU in collaboration with local partners in various host cities, the workshop series aims to leverage the reality of the city as a laboratory for developing socially responsive design measures. It is intended to provoke, stimulate, and reconsider the role of designers in promoting spatial justice.

Focusing on the changing landscapes, contested processes and interdependencies within cities, the dpusummerLab series asserts that to appropriately engage in this arena, a critical recalibration is required concerning a new paradigmatic shift in the cultures and disciplines of design and urban practice.

DPU summerLab 2014 series
After the success of last year's initiatives the Bartlett Planning Unit is pleased to offer again the workshops in Medellín and their own backyard London, while introducing two new compelling destinations, Dublin and Beirut.

THE SCHEDULE OF THE DPU SUMMERLAB 2014 SERIES IS:
Medellín | 25-30 August
"Everyday Infrastructures"
Dublin | 1-6 September
Urban Crisis 
Beirut  | 8-13 September
Patchwork City 
London | 15-20 September
Localising Legacies 

FEES
The international participation fee for each workshop is £400. 
For currently enrolled DPU students (2013-14) and DPU alumni the fee is £300. 
If a participant registers for multiple workshops, the total fee will be discounted with each additional workshop. Please note these fees do not include travel or accommodation, though advice and information can be provided.

APPLICATIONS 
• The closing date for applications is Monday 14 July 2014.
• To apply, please e-mail a CV and letter of motivation along with the application form to dpusummerlab@ucl.ac.uk.
• The application form can be downloaded HERE in Word format. Although not required, a design portfolio may be submitted with the application [PDF 5mb max]. 

INFO CONTACT
DPU SummerLab 2014 series" Webpage 
EMAIL | dpusummerlab@ucl.ac.uk 

25-30 August
MEDELLIN | "Everyday Infrastructures"
in collaboration with Master in Urban and Regional Studies (MEUR) at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin Campus

Medellin has been defined the “rising star” of the Latin American urbanism and received global attention for its social urbanism program; innovative urban projects aiming to re-integrate the city, enabling marginalised communities to be empowered and reconnected to the magical urban core.
This year’s summerLab will - through a deconstruction of the notion of social urbanism’s discursive practices and an understanding of the aesthetics regimes of both government and grassroots - look into the every day realities of a specific Communa on the slopes of Medellin. It aims to understand the small grassroots interventions in Communa 8’s territory and to see how spaces are created and constructed as alternative and counter-hegemonic urban planning in contrast to the grand beautification gestures of the city. Thus, the summerLab will focus on the intersections of livelihoods and domestic space as an avoided substance in the social urbanism core tenets.  

1-6 September
DUBLIN | "Urban Crisis"
In collaboration with Michael Byrne (National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, NUI Maynooth), Patrick Bresnihan (Provisional University) and with the facilitation of Andrea Rigon.

The Dublin Docklands area was at the centre of real estate development in Dublin. The docks had gone through a period of decline from the 1970s due deindustrialisation and the introduction of containerization. During the 1990s and 2000s this historic working class area was then targeted with a host of tax relief schemes for development. It became a Financial Services Centre (essentially a tax haven) with office spaces and ‘yuppie’ apartments. Following the crisis, much of the undeveloped land and many assets are now held by NAMA.  The resistance to financialisation and its impact on urban development has largely been led by local working class communities. However, there has also been a large growth in ‘DIY urbanism’: small, everyday projects that are about opening up access to urban space and participation in ‘city-making’. These include social centres, art spaces, community gardens, ‘pop-ups’ and squats. While these spaces don’t have an explicitly political focus, they offer a different view of how urban space can be created, accessed and managed.
This summerLab will analyse how political economic dynamics have transformed urban space and the nature of the city and how citizens have contested this process. The Docklands area provides a case study for the dynamics of the financialisation of urban development, which have mutated in the post-crisis context.

8-13 September
BEIRUT  | "Patchwork City"
In collaboration with Public Interest Design Levant and the Design Department, Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts / University of Balamand 

The Civil War that lasted a good 15 years up until the early 90s has contributed greatly to the ever-changing dynamics of the urban fabric in Beirut. Neighbourhoods that had previously been entwined were suddenly broken across political and sectarian trajectories. The recovery process following the war was centred on the built environment, managing to create only a patchwork of different fabrics, both social and physical, but communities were still dissected.
The Beirut summerLab intervenes in an area that has suffered tremendously from the war, and has since been neglected. Situated by the port and where the train station once existed, it has seen industrialization slowly take over, radically changing its perceived image and shadowing its residential parts. The neighbourhood itself has been sliced along sectarian and political boundaries during the war, and was distanced from Beirut along a highway during the 50s. 

15-20 September
LONDON | "Localising Legacies"
In collaboration with Alberto Duman (Artist, School of Art and Design, Middlesex University, London) 

As speculation still fumes on the future impact of the 2012 Olympic Games on East London development, various pockets of this fluctuating area are already at work to reclaim their place and identity in the midst of capital-driven schemes. The Olympic Village and its satellite developments are only one side of the so-called ‘London Legacy’. On the other one, we see areas containing informal living, buildings that have been squatted, demographic data that remain mostly unknown.
Trying to answer these questions, we seek to expose emergent urbanisms that are now facing the re-development of East London in the shade of the mega-event impact. Participants will be immersed into the realities of various communities in East London, through visits to new landmarks, neighbourhood journeys, citizens’ and communities’ inputs. The workshop will experiment and play with considerations of localised ‘branding’ and crowdsourcing, and understand possibilities for critical social interventions and design strategies at various scales and output types.