#27 Regeneration [and its Discontents]

Hybrid space

Why the talk is inspiring?

The lecture focuses on the Hybrid Space approach to urban and spatial phenomena, presenting a series of projects by Hybrid Space Lab.

Hybrid Space considers in an integrated way physical space and media networks as well as built space and natural environments.

The Hybrid Space approach develops ‘hybrid strategies’ of “crossover”, drawing on the recognition that transferring ideas from one field to another is a recipe for cultural innovation.

Hybrid Space Lab addresses the interconnected challenges of today, across the issues of environment and climate change, globalization and migration, digitalization and accelerating technological developments:

“We approach the technological developments from the perspective of the designer, architect, urbanist by “inhabiting technology” – transforming technological developments to meet today’s needs and desires”.

05
march
2020

Speaker

Elizabeth Sikiaridi

How the speaker is exceptional?

Professor Elizabeth Sikiaridi is co-founder of the Berlin-based Hybrid Space Lab, a Think Tank and Design Lab, a cultural breeding ground for incubating breakthrough concepts and fostering innovation contributing to positive societal and environmental change.

Professor Elizabeth Sikiaridi has lectured since 1997 on design in the urban landscape at the University of Duisburg-Essen and at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Ostwestfallen-Lippe, where she initiated and is leading the international Master in Sustainable Landscape Design and Development.

Elizabeth was born in London and grew up in Athens. She studied architecture and urbanism at the École d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris and at the Technical University of Darmstadt (graduation with honors).

She worked at the architectural office Behnisch & Partner in Stuttgart on the extension of the German Federal Bank in Frankfurt and on the German Federal Parliament in Bonn. Elizabeth was Assistant Professor at the Technical University in Berlin.

Elizabeth has practiced, lectured and published broadly internationally, with recent publications including media such as DIE ZEIT, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Tagesspiegel and taz (Germany), El País (Spain), Huffington Post and FranceTV (France).

RECOMMENDS TO READ

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Shoshana Zuboff

Why the book is worth reading?

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism,” and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us.

The heady optimism of the Internet’s early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now depend not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future?

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism’s impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization.