Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Refuge

[Image: Photo by Bas Princen, from Five Cities Portfolio].

Photographer Bas Princen has a new book out, Five Cities Portfolio: Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Dubai, Istanbul, coinciding with a conference to be held this Friday, November 20, at the Netherlands Architecture Institute.

That event, called "Refuge: Architectural Propositions for Unbound Spaces," will feature—among many other things—a presentation by Philipp Misselwitz and Can Altay, whose research accompanies (and seems to have at least partially inspired) Princen's photos.

[Images: Photos by Bas Princen, from Five Cities Portfolio].

About the conference:
    "Refuge" explores the causes and spatial impact of migration through voluntary or involuntary "refugees" who are transforming cities around the globe. Individuals or groups are elegantly or forcefully encapsulated from within the context of the city and society. Refuge produces an ever more atomized urban tissue where the "camp" has become both spatial paradigm and everyday reality, be it in the form of a gated community, slum, or humanitarian refugee camp.
You can check out the conference schedule in this PDF—in which you will also see that there is a release party this week for the new issue of Pedro Gadanho's Beyond, as well as a lecture by Eyal Weizman.

More of Princen's work can be found at Icon magazine, meanwhile, and an interesting interview with Princen was published in Oase #76 last year.