Housing models for a new urban density

Lecture by Piet Eckert

A lecture series on the urban densification of the European city

Presently, almost all major cities in Western Europe are experiencing substantial demographic growth in a scale hitherto unseen in recent memory. This development is the result of radical social, demographic and economic transformations that are related to the effects of globalization. Several million new affordable urban apartments are urgently required. After almost a century of suburbanization and declining urban density, substantial urban re-densification is now taking place. 

This development - for which many cities are unprepared – demands, on the one hand, precise urban planning and clever typological concepts (beyond the modernistic idea of „Existenzminimum“ and the myth of the „Steinerne Stadt“). On the other hand, the difficult question of the relationship between individuality and collectivity arises again with an undeniable urgency. 

Is the current idea of the neo-liberal city still relevant, or do we have to rethink again other urban models, such as the modernist concept of the “grand ensembles”?

In the lecture series, European protagonists present new approaches to urban housing based on exemplary projects in major European cities.

Date: 26.06.2019 - from 18:00 - 19:30, afterwards panel discussion
Venue: Building 6 - PBSA, Room 06.E.006
Address:
Hochschule Düsseldorf
Peter Behrens School of Arts
Fachbereich Architektur
Münsterstraße 156
D-40476 Düsseldorf