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Gentrification

London Publication Launch & Roundtable

Wednesday 2 November 2011, 6.30-8.30 pm
The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London NW8 8PQ
Tel: 020 7724 4300, E-mail: info@theshowroom.org

 

On the occasion of the launch of the Anatomy of a Street publication, a roundtable discussion will focus on plans and perspectives for Church Street in London Westminster, an area under major transformation, addressing questions related to urban regeneration, the role of internal borders and isolation in the preservation of neighbourhood character, social cohesion and local economy.

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Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer & Wojciech Kacperski

Mokotowska Street: The Fresh Start of an Old Sentiment

    “Are you a Varsovian? Bred-in-the-bone? Then show your ID!”, was one gentleman’s answer to the question what he thought about Mokotowska Street. In a perverse way his reaction expresses a pretty common attitude toward the street located in the city’s centre: Mokotowska has always been here and only those who know about it can claim to be True Varsovians.

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Warsaw symposium

Researching and shaping post-socialist urban space 3.

 

 

 

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Budapest symposium

 

Researching and shaping post-socialist urban space 1.

 

 

 

On the 7th of November 2010, from 2 - 7 pm

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Emőke Kerekes

Vendor's Portraits, Király Street

While surveys generally focus on the residents of a particular area, we often have no information about the people who work there. However, these are the people who effect the character of a neighbourhood the most. Emőke Kerekes, in her series of portraits taken of shopkeepers of Király Street, reveal the great variety of retail types in the neighbourhood and the heterogeneity of their vendors.

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Béla Káli

Cul-de-sacs of Transformation: The fate of central quarters after privatisation

The inner Erzsébetváros (Elizabethtown) in Budapest fell victim to the merchant spirit already upon its formation in the late 19th century. A rather dense urban structure was formed already then – with all lots covered from one end to the other – leaving very little public space. With the exception of Klauzál Square, there are no green areas or parks in the inner, densely populated quarters of Districts VI and VII. Although such spaces were, in fact, included in the urban planning, the city sold them to investors, and they have been built over.

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Péter Rákosi (Technika Schweiz)

Shop windows - an inventory, 2007-2010

Shop windows constitute the most visible layer of the urban signscape. Together with posters, advertisements and grafitti messages, they constantly update the city's visual environment: they discribe to the passer-by the current state of consumable objects. Created to animate the desire of shoppers, they are also talkative inventories of what a store has to comunicate. Crafted with humor or exhibitionism, some shop windows peel off from the store they represent and become self-referentional signs, mere decorations of the street.

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Edwin Heathcote

Church and King

The point where Church Street spills into the roaring Roman Road of Edgware appears an exemplar of urban dysfunction and a crushing critique of London’s particular brand of anti-urbanism. Yet, this is a cityscape of infinite complexity, one of the most perfect ciphers for the contemporary city in which globalisation informs the street in every conceivable way.

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Eszter Steierhoffer & Levente Polyák

Anatomy of a Street: an introduction

Welcoming Cities 

The London Festival of Architecture’s theme, ‘Welcoming Cities’, is open to a variety of interpretations: of cities welcoming the Olympic Games, as well as cities welcoming initiatives, diversity and eventually conflict. The Anatomy of a Street project poses the question somewhat differently: what if large-scale cultural or sporting events affect cities in far more diverse ways than we expect?

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