StadsSalonsUrbains 23/24

Rewind, Fast Forward: Unravelling the Historical Layers and Meanings of Our Built Environment

This year’s series delves into the intricate process of constructing the built environment, highlighting how meaning is embodied in the various layers that have been added over time. Through a multidisciplinary lens, experts in architecture, urban planning, archaeology, landscape architecture, heritage and history explore how the physical spaces we inhabit reflect the (building) culture, values, and norms of the societies that created them and, inversely, how our surroundings shape our experiences and identities.

By looking at the city fabric as an accumulated concentration of material, political, economic, ecological, technological and cultural history, we unravel how power dynamics and social inequalities are ingrained in our built heritage, how the city relates to its surrounding landscapes, but also how we can prospectively relate to the built environment as a combination of ‘embodied energy’ and ‘embodied culture’.