Introduction to the event by Alvaro

The overarching theme of this panel is ‘boundaries’, looking at this through the lens of the psychological,

the physical and the representational. Tatjana Crossley will be discussing the boundary of the body image,

looking largely at the psychological aspect of body image formation and evolution (as it relates to the

subjective and sensory experience of space and virtual space). Elena Palacios will be considering the space of

the artist studio as an inhabited boundary that exists between and merges the space of the home and the

public. And Sofia Krimizi will be examining the boundaries imposed by and generated through education

in the context of the architecture school, specifically looking into the departure from the building as a

boundary that separates the act of learning from the objects that architects are learning from.

This panel will discuss the ideas of hybridity in two phenomena. Damnoen Techamai will be

using the term to explain wedding ceremonies in the current culture condition of Thailand through

wedding gowns. The productions of objects and services seem to refer to traditions in Thailand but are

basically an invented tradition. Secondly, the notion of hybridity will be discussed in traditional questions

in social science of the relationship between things which are both natural and cultural. Kornkamon

Kaewprasert will be discussing the idea of wood symbolising wood by giving the distinction of the object,

tree , and the substance, wood , which is overlaid by the distinction of culture and nature. Kanyaphorn

Kaewprasert will be examining the forest, a paradoxical object, by laying out its terms from natural to

cultural understandings, in particular, a forest in its impermeable, pure, stage to the forest in fairytales.

The panel will discuss two different examples of utopian ideas. Both discussions will show the

complications where imaginary narratives affect the spatial conditions and architectural practices, effecting

the very forms of life of its people. The first presentation discusses the policies on exhumations and burials

in Singapore and reflects on the distinct spatial technologies the Singaporean state has utilised to tackle the

issues of land scarcity while at the same time, trying to create a sense of rootedness in its citizens. The

second presentation, focusing on the international zone in The Hague, argues that the deliberate projection

of neutrality – understood by its ease of integration in to the everyday, its pure functional rhetoric and lack

of any overt representation of power – is the inevitable architectural language of international

organisations, is rooted in modernism and is closely aligned with its inherent paradoxical political stance.

The panel will discuss contemporary questions surrounding the social and political character of

architectural and urban planning. In particular, attention will be paid to the historical connection between

planning, social democracy, and the welfare state, which today takes on a particular significance. The panel

will address contemporary critical perceptions of historical instances of planning, with focus on the

limitations of those critiques. The speakers will suggest different approaches to the notion of planning – a

notion which tends to condense a number of ambiguous institutional and political associations within

architectural discourse.

Constance Lau, Doreen Bernath, Jon Goodbun, Maria S. Giudici, Teresa Stoppani, Mark Campbell (tbc), Mark

Cousins, Mark Morris (tbc), Melissa Moore