Basrah People's Park, Basrah, Iraq: When The Tide Has Ebbed; book page title depicted upper centre image above
Manhattan: framework for evolving economy and cultures. Air and street views, Gt. Jones & Lafayette - parking machines' site will evolve to house tomorrow's city; experimental & productive industry-culture / culture industry inter-twined with open public park space
Design Research: Cities has been invited to assist The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial) with development of The Basrah Museum and ideas for a new people's park on the banks of the river at Basrah, October 2017
A monumental 85 hectare palace complex --including early twentieth century palaces as well as two (of a hundred) built infamously by Saddam Hussein in the late 1980's and early 1990's-- will be transformed in to a people's park. The most beautiful park in the Middle East will recuperate the former marsh landscape in a symbolic renaturalisation of the site. It will also open and transform Saddam's heavily fortified palace site into stages for public occupation, and aid the revival of a tolerant, creative society. The park will be a symbolic pivot for the future of Iraqi culture, re-connected to the region and the world.
Paul Fineberg gave a talk, Dynamics of Urban Design, on the work of Design Research: Cities, at WXY Studio, New York, NY, September 2017
We appreciate that from Aleppo to London, and Newcastle to New York, city ecologies produce knowledge, capacity, changing technology, communications development and international relations. Economies and cultures inter-twine and evolve in cities. Our projects seek to extend these dynamics, aiding the organisation of competing demands on urban centres to propel creative industry and culture, as well as a flourishing of the people, in exciting new city complex and public park space.
Read Claire Weisz and WXY Studio organised; "Sharing The City: Learning from the New York City Public Space Movement 1990-2015" http://www.wxystudio.com/uploads/2200022/1501253229833/Print_June_1_20171.pdf
Guest Critic at The Bartlett, University College London, U12, Architecture and the City
Paul Fineberg was invited to give critiques of post-graduate students' work in May 2017
Teaching at The Bartlett, MArch architecture course, Unit 10, University College London
Simon Dickens was appointed in late 2016 to teach with CJ Lim, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, on the MArch architecture course, Unit 10, in The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College, London (UCL). The studio’s work is based around sustainable urban planning, architecture and landscape, focusing in particular on interpretations of social, cultural and environmental programmes.
A talk in Paris in Spring 2016, on the landscape of the railway
Paul Fineberg gave a talk in Paris on the landscape of the railway, entitled, "Reflections on Train Systems; Driving the Landscape of Development". International Union of Railways, Paris, 27 April 2016
Image left: The steam engine and railway is the prime figure of modernity, before the telegraph, telephone, container ship and the world wide web
Shortlisted for Egyptian Government strategy for 34 million people on 16.8% land area of the country
After ACE Cairo's invitation to lead vision planning, we wrote the strategy approach, with input from Atelier Ten Environmental Engineers, and the University College London Centre for Applied Archaeology, for the Egyptian Government Office of Physical Planning (GOPP) Mediterranean North Coast Region Plan for 34 million people. In early 2016 GOPP shortlisted our team, with ACE as lead consultant , in competition with Albert Speer + Partner, Dar Al Handasah, and two other agencies.