ISC/U+L COMMITTEE MEETING AT LANDSCAPES OF THE RECENT FUTURE CONFERENCE (EDINBURGH, APRIL 2011)
Committee matters:
(a) LIAISON WITHIN DOCOMOMO (GENERAL)
Miles reported on his recent visit to Barcelona HQ and his discussions with Ivan Blasi, which covered a range of current U + L issues, especially the website. Hopefully it will be possible to repeat these visits every 6-9 months.
(b) ISC/U + L WEBSITE
Amy Hickman gave a laptop demo of the new website, which was inspired by the similar initiative by Education + Theory. It was designed to operate both as a branch of the main DOCOMOMO-International website and also to provide a means of rapid dissemination of information (eg e-proceedings – see below) (website address: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/docomomoiscul/)
(c) ISC/U + L ROLE IN FACILITATING POTENTIAL NEW WORKING PARTIES
Miles reported on progress with the two new proposed working parties in Hong Kong and Jiangnan (mainland China): both were aiming to have proposals ready for approval at the 2012 conference.
Progress with 2010-12 Plan of Action:
(a) LANDSCAPE POLICY PROGRAMME
Jan reported on wider progress with the Plan of Action for landscape, within which this conference played a key role. The next stage would be hopefully to build on the conclusions of the conference in a special landscape session of the Helsinki conference in 2012. (session arrangements still tbc)
(b) MASS HOUSING INVENTORY
Miles reported on progress with the mass housing initiative, which was the main current ‘urbanism’ initiative of the group. It comprises both a ‘basic level’ database of copyright-free on-line images (Amy reported on progress with the pilot phase of this, and demonstrated examples: see ISC U + L website), and a more in-depth research-based strand: this would include the forthcoming EAHN-DOCOMOMO mass housing conference in September, and hopefully a mass-housing-themed session at Helsinki (again, to be confirmed). Involvement in a COST programme on suburban housing had also been proposed by Ola Wedebrunn (tbc)
(c) PUBLICATIONS AND E-PROCEEDINGS
Amy updated the meeting with progress on uploading proceedings, etc, to the U + L website. Miles reported on the recent publication of the Scottish material from the Mirror of Modernity conference (including very useful material about housing rehab in the 70s), with full acknowledgement of DOCOMOMO, in the latest Journal of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland.
(d) SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE
Ola reported that the S Hemisphere forum group, established in 2009 under U + L auspices, had now been absorbed into a wider range of initiatives, including Archiafrika and the new S Africa DOCOMOMO working party.
