Current Initiatives
The Urban Dialogues is a week-long annual event hosted by the School which promotes critical reflection, research, and professional engagement in the urban and built environment disciplines. Running during the first week of quarter 2 each the academic year, the Urban Dialogues features intensive coursework, site visits, presentations, academic events, exhibits, and public lectures, creating a buzz of activity that creates a stage for interdisciplinary discussions, innovative initiatives, and collaborative works.
During the week, the participating degree programmes (BSc Hons URP, PG Dip, MUD, MUS, MSc DP, PhD) stray from their normal timetable and run a block timetable on-campus, offering students an opportunity to conduct extended site visits or field research, engage with students in other related disciplines, mingle with invited professionals, gain exposure to work within the disciplines, and become central players in the culture of critical inquiry within the School. 足球竞彩app排名s are advised to block out the entire week in their calendars in order to take advantage of the variety of activities offered during the week. The latest timetable for block of coursework and events is available here.
Through the public events, the Urban Dialogues give professionals, academics, and anyone generally interested in African urbanism a way to engage with the School, find future collaborators, and participate in the ongoing conversations about the disciplines. The latest events in the Urban Dialogues can be found here.
Urban Dialogues Exhibition Opening:
Ede: A Tropical Ontology of Sound & Space
Monday 7 April 5pm to 6.30pm
Exhibit by Sechaba Maape, Adey Omotade, Emalohi Iruob.
Tropical Ontology is a collaborative exhibition exploring the equator as humanity’s original ontological home. Through AI-generated architectures, Yoruba-inspired soundscapes, and ritual video works, the exhibition weaves together themes of climate, rhythm, and identity. It challenges colonial spatial logics and imagines a conceptual return to the warmth, breeze, and resonance of the tropics—offering mediation as its central intellectual contribution, with architecture as one of many forms through which it is expressed.
Venue: John Moffat Foyer
SACAP CPD points available (0.2 Category 1)
Cities Rethought: A New Urban Disposition
Tuesday 8 April 5.15pm to 6.45pm
A Faces of the City (FoTC) seminar presented by Sue Parnell.
In a world of disruptions and seemingly endless complexity, cities have become, perhaps more than ever, central to the thinking about humanity. Yet rarely has the study of cities been more fragmented among different silos of experience, diverse genres of scholarship, and widening chasms between theory and practice. How can we do better? Cities Rethought suggests that we need to remake the way we see and know cities in order to rethink how we act and intervene within them. To this end, it offers the contours of a new urban disposition. This disposition, articulated through its normative, analytical, and operational elements, offers an opportunity for scholars, practitoners and citizens alike to approach the complexity of cities anew, and find ways to rethink both scholarly analyses as well as modes of practice.
Venue: Hybrid. 1st Floor Seminar Room, John Moffat
Zoom link for online attendees: Link
Community Development & Upliftment:
The Role of Architects in Shaping Inclusive Cities
Thursday 10 April 6.15pm to 8pm?
A public lecture presented by Mark Schaerer.
Sponsored by GiFA, Mark Schaerer will showcase his small practice, SRS Architects, highlighting its work in Brixton. He will explore how collaborations with residents, professionals, artists, and city officials has helped blur the boundaries between architecture, urban design, and community building, contributing to more inclusive cities.
Venue: Hybrid. John Moffat Foyer
To Join via MS TEAMS: Link
SACAP CPD points available (0.2 Category 1)
Past Initiatives
Youth and the work/housing nexus in Ethiopia and South Africa is a British Academy- funded research project led by the University of Sheffield with partners from CUBES and SA&CP. It will explore the interrelationship between work (formal and informal) and housing, and how youth experience and shape this. It has a strong focus on youth participants, and during 2020/21 it will use a case study site in Gauteng and in Hawassa, Ethiopia, building on aspects of the three-year Living the Urban Peripheries funded research project which School staff were involved in.
Micro-dynamics and Macro-processes: a Maputo-Johannesburg comparative study of intra-household decision-making and state-investment in transit. Volvo Foundation funding has been awarded in 2020 as part of the “Mobility and Access in African Cities” programme for a joint initiative by CUBES, SA&CP and GCRO and colleagues at the University of Eduardo Mondlane, involving parallel studies on transit in Gauteng and in Maputo. The project includes four master’s student bursaries. The first project workshop was held in Maputo on the 12th of March 2020 during a fieldtrip by Wits staff and students to the city.