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Interview: Milena Vukmirović

GP — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 08:19:20 +0000

Milena Vukmirović, PhD, Executive Coordinator of the Places and Technologies 2014 conference, reveals for CAB blog some first-hand information on authors and topics that await us at this event.

What is the number of submitted papers and what kind of interest have domestic and foreign experts shown for this event?

A total of 126 papers have been submited, signed by 248 authors and co-authors; the figures show the seriousness of the event. Of this number, 53 papers were sent by colleagues from abroad, so the interest for the conference is evenly distributed among domestic and foreign experts.

As for the participants from Serbia, we may say that the papers come from the majority of registered universities in our country: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Novi Pazar etc. On the other hand, the largest number of papers from abroad were submitted by researchers from the region (Croatia, Montenegro, FYR Macedonia, Albania, Republic of Srpska (BIH), Romania, Bulgaria), although a significant number of papers also came from Italy, Austria, Turkey and Great Britain.

Are you satisfied with the diversity of papers, considering the multidisciplinary approach of the conference? What topics did the authors recognize as the most interesting? What topics and authors do you announce as an outstanding contribution to the conference?

The multidisciplinary concept of the conference is confirmed through papers belonging to different research domains. The majority belongs to the domain of urban planning, architectural technologies and architecture in general, but we also have papers dealing with traffic, civil engineering and geodesy, electrotechnics, mechanical engineering and a certain number of researches belonging to social and humanist sciences.

Having in mind the topics of the conference, the majority of the papers responded to the topic of urban design and technologies, innovative materials, systems and technologies and the topic of green building and green strategies and technologies.

What are the expected direct results of the conference and how are they going to be prepared and presented to the participants and the public? How do you plan to continue the activities started with this conference?

All submitted and accepted papers will be published in the digital proceedings, accessible on-line, and open for broader public. Besides this, Cambridge Scholar Publishing plans to publish a scientific monography. A thematic issue of the Energy and Building scientific journal will also be prepared. Both of these publications are envisaged as a sort of a follow-up of the conference.

Also, our plan is to organize this conference once in every two years, so the sequel of these activities can be expected in 2016.

The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 will be held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3rd and 4th 2014. The Centre for Architecture Belgrade is the official new media partner.

Interview: Eva Vaništa Lazarević

GP — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 09:39:13 +0000

Awaiting the start of the Places and Technologies 2014 conference, prof. Eva Vaništa Lazarević, PhD, Technical Director of the conference, talks exclusively for CAB blog about her experiences on preparations for this event. What is the goal of this conference? The goal is, first of all, meeting and networking of young scientists, who nowdays have a hard time finding resources for travel and broadening of knowledge, meaning that they work less and less with their colleagues from the academic world. Younger scientists and schollars will have an opportunity to meet well-kown experts at the conference and learn what is new, but also to check where they are with their research; to realistically understand their achievements compared with others. That is something that no country in the World can do without: the strenghtening of its’ scientific potential through comparation and competitiveness. What is special about the Places and Technologies, compared to other conferences? Is it mainly an academic or expert - architecture and urbanism event? Among numerous conferences that take place worldwide, we wanted to organize a slightly enhanced fusion of three areas: science, education and technological knowledge derived from the practice. Ambitiously conceived, the conference was not easy to organize: to gather the highest representatives of academia from the region and wider – the deans of architecture faculties, who meet in Belgrade after more than two decades, and foreign experts from the practice and top professors – experts from reputable faculties from across Europe. Why is it important to connect places and technologies? The place as term is still rarely spoken of in the domestic practice, dominant terms are areas or spaces. Places in English depicts a much wider context than our firs associative translation: space (prostor), although it probably describes it better: place (but also non-place) of cities, with the technology strongly implemented in it. Nothing is as it was a few years ago – especially in the sphere of high technologies, with rapid progress. Museums no longer contain artefacts, they are virtual, people no longer communicate directly, but through social networks, public spaces are equipped with chargers for mobile devices and interactive maps. Tourists no loger buy maps, but follow the information on their smartphones, who are rendered obsolete every year and constantly need to be replaced with newest models. Even older generations use more and more technological terms, and the communication of two people, even on a date or a business meeting at a restaurant, is impossible without constant checking of the mobile phone. This gesture, previously considered as the sign of bad manners, has spread over the Planet: even the German chancellor did not resist looking at her smart phone while standing in the first row of CeBIT conference. This phenomenon is also related to the society of extreme individualsim, that we live in today. How did you select the key speakers and guests of the conference? In what direction are you trying to stear the conference? International conferences are based on previous long-term acquaintances and collegiality. The board of this conference is formed – due to certain circumstances – of a completely female team, and the members are distingushed professors (prof. Milica Bajić Brković, PHD, who provided the support of ISOCARP, prof. Aleksandra Krstić, PhD and prof. Aleksandra Đukić, PhD). It was their privilege to invite the reputable colleagues from Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Great Britain and Italy. The scientific board members are, besides our dean and our professors, Worldwide experts: from Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cypruss, Great Britain, Poland, Turkey, Czech Republic and Lithuania, as well as members of the academic communities from the region, including professors of philosohy and other technical faculties. To make sure that the conference is not solely academic and perhaps a bit boring, we invited the guests from the practice: the French team Nodesign.net, who come from Paris and will show their achievements in creating virtual museums. Even the very active archeologist Rade Milić, the author of the first interactive board in Belgrade and the researcher of Belgrade underground spaces, will participate. The messages of the conference will be focused on the following: what we have acheived, what we can do and the possible ways of acheiving it today. In what way do you believe that the local academic and professional architectural communities can benefit from this conference? What benefits do you foresee for the development of Belgrade and other cities in the region? Has the conference met the support in the public, especially in terms of sponsorships and donations? What kind of support did the institutions (ministries, local authorities and government agencies) promise to provide? Telekom Serbia understood the importance of this event and offered to be the general sponsor – confirming the importance of new technologies as one of rare companies that does not have to worry about survival in the hard year we live in. The majojrity of embassies we contacted recognized the topic of the green aspect in implementation of high-tech improvements in space and clearly institutionally supported the conference. Unfortunately, due to the economic crisis, only the French Embassy wanted to help with the travel and accomodation arrangements of French guests. Savski venac was the only municipality who accepted to participate financially. Vračar resigned at the last moment for political reasons, and many municipalities did not even bother to respond to our letters. The Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade, as the largest urban planning enterprise in the country, institutionally supported the conference, with the technical manager of the Institute as a member of our scientific board. On the other hand, places where the results of the conference could be implemented – local governements, did not respond, not even from Vojvodina. Private companies, like Arhipro, provided the always-welcomed finantial support and showed understanding, always based on the enthousiasm of one man, in this case a woman, my dear colleague architect Anja Milić. I speak of this as the gathering of finantial resources for the conference proved to be hard and somewhat degrading work, as it took seven months. The organization team, first of all Milena Vukmirović, PhD and myself, wrote, pleaded and met around five hundred institutions, companies and embassies. The Chamber of Engineers of Serbia showed a lot of understanding as our lead financier. The ministry of science also provided important funding. We expect support from companies like Philips and Lafarge, as well as the Emabassy of Netherlands, as the most prominent donors in Serbia. The benefits of the conference will probably not be visible instantly, but will surely provide long-term strategic impact. Our intention is to prepare a book and a manual with guidance based on conference results and easily applicable in local communities, related to the application of technologies in cities, with chapters by selected authors from the conference. Besides the proceedings with all hunderd and fifty papers, two more important publications will be prepared afterwards: Cambridge offered to print free of charge selected conference papers. Also, the elite journal Energy & Building will publish a special issue with the most important papers from our conference. The whole conference will be recorded and a video will be prepared for YouTube, and Twitter and other social networks will be used to transmit the information from the conference. The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 will be held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3rd and 4th 2014. The Centre for Architecture Belgrade is the official new media partner.

Places and Technologies 2014

GP — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 11:38:41 +0000

The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 was held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3rd and 4th 2014.

The Centre for Architecture Belgrade was the official new media partner. Also, we presented two papers entitled “The Impact of Smart Home Technologies on Architectural Design” and “Google Earth as a Microworld”.

Places and Technologies 2014

MZ — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 08:27:25 +0000

The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 will be held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3^rd and 4^th 2014, with the aim to explore and present papers, studies and projects dealing with the improvement of city spaces using technologies. The conference is organized in partnership between the Faculty of Architecture Belgrade, UrbanLab and the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, and the official new media partner of the conference will be the Centre for Architecture Belgrade.

The Places and Technologies 2014 conference will showcase research from the domains of Urban design, Urban planning, Design and management, Industrial and architectural design, Architectural and building technologies. From social aspect, the conference will deal with historical and philosophical component to high tech, urban sociology, innovations, ICT, as well as elements of transportation enhanced by technology up to geodesy and cartography and the ways technologies improve these fields (GIS).

The conference focus is sustainability in urban design, and it will consider social networks and microblogging, usage of technology in urban furniture, new innovative materials, high tech and high touch solutions. A hundred participants are anticipated, and around 30 experts from Europe working in the field of high technologies in both scientific and professional terms, have confirmed they participation, together with special professional guests.

Conference participants will have the opportunity to hear presentations by dr Milica Bajić Brković, tenure professor, president of ISOCARP – global association of professional planners; dr Jan Belis from Belgium who is a leading expert in structural glass applications and president of COST project; dr Stefan van der Spek from Netherlands, who works in interior design and topics such as intermodal transferpoints and human hub; dr Manfred Schrenk from the Central European Institute of Technology in Austria, planner and GIS expert; and professor Phil Jones from UK who is an expert in energy efficiency and teaches in Malesia, China and Hong Kong.

Besides key note speakers, the conference will feature special professional guests such as Jean-Louis Frechin from the leading French design company noDesign which deals with high tech and is working on projects from the French government, Citroen, Renault etc; dr Marija Todorović, electrical engineer and tenure professor whose field of expertise includes sustainable energy and green building with the use of solar power; dr Andjelka Mihajlov, sustainability expert, scientist and tenure professor at the University in Novi Sad, who leads the department for inclusion of the Western Balkans in the European flows of sustainability at the Ministry of sustainable development and urban planning; and Rade Milić, archaeologist and president of Center for urban development that realizes innovative projects for the protection of cultural heritage in Belgrade and Serbia. Technical director of the conference is Eva Vaništa Lazarević, PhD, tenure professor of the Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade University.

The choice of keynote speakers, guests and participants of the conference speaks of the organizers intentions to encourage networking and cooperation between institutions, corporations and experts, form potential for future bilateral international cooperation, open current topics to young researchers and create a platform for knowledge exchange. The deadline for abstract submission is December 10^th, and detailed requirements can be found at the conference official Web site.