Unthinking the Mixed
The term “mixed” has become synonymous with “good urbanism”. Yet, the term "mixed" is often not explored beyond the obvious. In town planning and architecture, “mixed” usually denotes two or more adjacent land-uses or modes of occupation that do not disrupt each other. It is adjacency rather than mixed as in forces being intermingled to create something new. The prosaic "mixed" is un-mixed. As Slavoj Žižek wrote, “Today’s liberal tolerance towards others, the respect of otherness and openness towards it, is counterpointed by an obsessive fear of harassment.” In this, the conventional mindset of separating out different noise, smells, socio-economies and cultural groups remained intact.
Urbanarium hosted the second Archosophy session, hosted by PFS Studios and moderated by Patrick Chan to unthink and rethink the term “mixed”, to question the unmixed within the celebrated “mixed”. To speculate and experiment with ways in which smells, sounds, and socio-cultural functions, and importantly persons, can exchange territorial grounds so that “mixed” may be founded in equity and dialogue rather than adjacencies in strata.
SPEAKERS
James A.V. Bligh
Vancouverism Revisited:
A Late Entry for the Vancouver Art Gallery
Speculative interests have driven a rampant homogeneous and banal urban landscape in Vancouver. This outrage has largely been given a pass because of the city’s breathtaking scenery and by trading density for small, pandering amenities. Perhaps Vancouver can transcend this reputation by creating space which aggravates the relationship between the intractable hand of development and the desires of the citizens.
This lecture investigates these notions through the lens of the Vancouver Art Gallery's move.
William Bruce Dunn
Beyond the Mixed Use Solution
The mixing of land uses is typically promoted by planners, architects and municipal leaders. But, what are the assumptions behind this?
This presentation will engage with some of the problems of "Solutionism" in particular relation to the notion of "mixed use". Particularly, it will be problematising how the rush to devise solutions often missed the deeper set ideological and socio-economic biases and problems that exist.