THE HORIZONTAL METROPOLIS: A RADICAL PROJECT
VIII INTERNATIONAL PHD SEMINAR 'URBANISM & URBANIZATION' | SYMPOSIUM LATSIS EPFL 2015
LAUSANNE 12, 13, 14 OCTOBER 2015
The VIII edition of U&U International PhD Seminar will be held at EPFL and hosted by the Symposium Latsis 2015. The two events will share conferences and common debates over the course of three days. The 8th edition of the U&U International PhD Seminar will be managed under the scientific direction of the Laboratory of Urbanism (Lab-U, EPFL) with the support of EDAR, EPFL’s Doctoral School, and Latsis Foundation.
The general theme for the 2015 U&U Seminar is “The Horizontal Metropolis: a radical project”. Horizontal Metropolis is both an image and a concept, it is a lens through which to view the form of the contemporary city, conceptualizing it and constructing it as a project.
It refers to a specific spatial condition characterized by a horizontality of infrastructure, urbanity, relationships, and by closely interlinked, co-penetrating rural/urban realms, communication, transport and economic systems. Contemporary urban figures such as Città diffusa in Northern Italy, Desakota in Asia or ville horizontale in Africa, fine grained settlement dispersion in Flanders, or Zwischenstadt in Germany are just some of the examples able to effectively describe this emergent urban condition, increasingly related to the dispersion of the urban fabric within the agricultural landscape.