The PROVOKE PhD Seminar Series aims to exchange ideas and stimulate thought-provoking debates around changing research themes in the fields of art, design and architecture. The first of these seminars, held earlier this year, utilised the broad theme of research Methods to allow us to commence the discourse of how we approach research in the multidisciplinary area of the arts and humanities. This second event is seen as both a continuation and refinement of this discussion through the exploration of one of CAVA’s ongoing research questions. What techniques might we utilise to understand how space is used in the moving image?

We invite doctoral researchers to share works in progress, or recently completed, that in any way analyse the use of space in the moving image. The techniques of analysis discussed at this event have the potential to be; existing methods used in the research of film or architecture, such as Supercuts or Space Syntax Theory, or new methods borrowed from other subjects or of the researchers own invention. To foster an open debate into these potentially diverse approaches, the seminar programme is conceived as a participatory open forum moderated by an expert in the field. As with the first seminar we would welcome interdisciplinary contributions that challenge established views and aim to infuse traditional lines of enquiry with new ideas.

Submissions will be curated and a selection of speakers will present at the Seminar. Abstracts that are not selected for presentation shall still be considered for publication in the proceedings, and all are welcome to join the discussion through attendance.

Guest Speakers Professor James Donald Dean and Professor of Film Studies, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW, Sydney Professor Richard Koeck Chair in Architecture and the Visual Arts, Liverpool School of Architecture, University of Liverpool Important Dates Call for Abstracts  19th Nov 2014 Submission Deadline  (17:00) 15th Dec 2014 Notification of Acceptance  19th Dec 2014 Seminar  (13:00 – 16:00) 12th Jan 2015 Organising Committee Niek Turner, PhD Candidate CAVA, School of Architecture University of Liverpool Pooya Sanjari, PhD Candidate CAVA, School of Architecture University of Liverpool Enquiries n.turner@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Marco Iuliano, Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture, has been invited to give a keynote speech at the international conference Aalto beyond Finland. Architecture and Design.

The conference will be held in Rovaniemi (16-18 February 2015) and gathers together researchers from all over the world. It is intended to investigate the exceptional impact of Alvar Aalto’s work abroad from the opening of his office in Turku in 1927 to the major works of the 1970s. Dr Iuliano’s paper, ‘Avant-garde Aalto’ will investigate how the Nordic classical precedents of Gunnar Asplund and Sven Markelius were suddenly turned into an original modernity by Aino and Alvar Aalto. Questioning their sources of inspiration, the keynote speech aims to suggest a re-assessment of the creative process of the architects, so as to explain how Aino and Alvar were able to absorb the most relevant avant-garde work of their time. Keynote speakers include Peter Blundell Jones, Juhani Pallasmaa, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Demetri Porphyrios.

Dr. Tuba Kocaturk has been invited to present at the “Architectural Design Research Symposium” as part of the 2014 Venice Biennale, on 20-21 November. The symposium will focus on “design as the primary vehicle for research innovation” and will bring together theorists, thinkers and practitioners who have shaped this discourse and activity. Her presentation is based on a recent ideational article co-authored with Prof. Michael Biggs and Prof. Richard Koeck entitled: “[Re]searching [im]probable, [im]possible and [un]desirable design futures”.

Rolling Around Like Gorillas on the Incline: Opening the Imaginary in Architecture and the Arts’.

How do abstract propositions and physical reality meet in architecture and art, and how does that transformation or bridge affect us as users? In 2001, the radical French architect Claude Parent published a manifesto, Twelve Subversive Acts to Dodge the System, outlining a set of rules or a methodology that dissolves the categories and order systems on which architecture is conventionally determined. These rules, if followed, would enable a new freedom for thinking, which for Parent was turning a building into a landscape thereby reorganizing the social dynamics of its inhabitants. Since the 1960s, Parent has been experimenting with similar ideas, initially with his collaborator, philosopher and urbanist Paul Virillio, which developed into what they termed Fonction Oblique. For Parent, ramps and sloped surfaces are a substitute for the conventionally orthogonal roles of walls, ceilings and floors – aesthetically inspired by World War II bunkers constructed along the Atlantic Wall. Parent’s tools are the oblique, but the logic of a dispositif is broadly relevant proposition. For this symposium, Twelve Subversive Acts to Dodge the System, is a starting point for thinking about tools and devices that open up the imaginary orchestrating new conditions that enable unforeseen outcomes.

Art exhibitions and museums are also places where the abstract and the concrete meet, not only in the ideas and works of artists but also in the audience experience. Co-commissioned by Tate Liverpool and the 8th Liverpool Biennial, A Needle Walks Into A Haystack, Parent’s radical transformation of the Wolfson Gallery at Tate Liverpool offers new possibility for how works from the Tate collection are viewed, and offers an alternative perspective of the physical and symbolic space of the museum. The new architecture is a device for thinking and experiencing – intended not as historic revisionism of utopian or modernist architecture – but a contemporary re-negotiation of the tools, terms and processes available to and invented by artists working today.

CAVA recently funded one if its PhD students, Matthew Armitt, on his first archival visit to Moscow in June of this year. Matthew spent under three weeks in Moscow gaining firsthand research on his research topic of VKhUTEMAS 1920-1930 (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops).

Whilst in Moscow, Matthew visited the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) and the Moscow School of Architecture (MArchI) both housing original material on VKhUTEMAS. Matthew discovered original drawings and photographs of this extraordinary school from the mid 1920’s. He was hoping to come across original student models from that period that may have existed, but unfortunately none have been preserved.

International workshop: Ancona-Urbino, 26 June-4 July 2014

The Culture of the City is a central concern in the discipline of Architecture. The long tradition of the study-tour of artists and architects is an evidence of the profound inspiration drawn from the historical city – the spaces, shapes, patterns, surfaces and materials composing the urban landscape were faithfully recorded and retained in the sketchbooks of generations of architects.

Italy was a favourite destination as it offered a rich selection of sites, from the principal cities like Venezia, Firenze, Roma, Naples and Pompei, to the small hill towns and villages in Tuscany, Lazio, Umbria, Campania and Sicily. In recognition of this tradition, the Università Politecnica delle Marche promotes an academic network aiming to exchange methodologies and strategies for the understanding of the urban landscape. The project follows the founding workshop promoted in the summer 2014 with a team of five universities and a selected number of advanced Master students and Ph.D. candidates.

This year the proposed subject is “The waterfront of Ancona: layers and strategies”. The area of the investigation will be the historical harbor and its links with the city, from Traian’s Arch to Luigi Vanvitelli’s Lazzaretto. The school will have different activities: investigation of the city structure, reading sessions, lectures. The Town Planning office and the Port Authority of Ancona will give support with lectures and meetings. A collaboration between Università Politecnica delle Marche, Aalto University (Helsinki), Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), University of Cambridge and University of Liverpool.

To supplement his research within CAVA, David Ogle has won a block of Arts Council funding through ‘Grants for the Arts’ which will be used to develop a series of environmental installation projects over the next two years and an accompanying exhibition of works and publication. These works will examine the value of staging artistic interventions within distant or inaccessible locations beyond the walls of cultural institutions. The project is supported, commissioned and facilitated by Mark Devereux Projects.

The contest’s next edition, Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries: Architecture, will focus on diverse countries and on how the migratory movements (crossing borders and boundaries) have influenced the places and people (identities) of those countries. This will certainly lead to several photography projects and critical analyses, which will explore how architecture is transformed, how it reflects different hybrid cultural identities in many countries and how all of this interacts with and affects our cities. Thus, we are interested in photography and in projects that may reveal the multiple layers of history embedded in the architecture of cities from different parts of the world, showing how these cities are in constant evolution and how they define new forms of occupation of the available territory. We are also interested in understanding how social, economic and political systems and values affect the territory and its cities, as well as the way people live and work on those places.

Jury 2014 Pedro Gadanho, Curator, MOMA Valeria Carullo, Curator, The Robert Elwall Photographs Collection RIBA British Architectural Library Marco Iuliano, Associate Professor, University of Liverpool, School of Architecture Jenny Feray, Photographer, Coordinator of the Photography Master, School of Arts, Ucp Ângela Ferreira, Curator, Director of Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal.

Palgrave MacMillan is publishing Cinematic Urban Geographies (forthcoming 2015) edited by Prof François Penz (Cambridge) and Prof Richard Koeck. The book builds on research and insight from an AHRC-funded project and explores different facets of urban fragmentation through the medium of cinema and the moving image, as a contribution to our understanding of cities and their topographies.