Cultural landscape: 4th European symposium on research in architecture and urban design Congreso Europeo sobre Investigación Arquitectónica y Urbana

The 4th “European Symposium on Research in Architecture and Urban Design EURAU’08: Cultural Landscape” was organised by the Technical University of Madrid’s Cultural Landscape Research Group in collaboration with the EURAU committee, of which it has been a member since 2004. EURAU’08 was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, as part of its National R+D+I Plan.

It constituted an international symposium with a strong research focus, where topics relating to the concept of Cultural Landscape and its impact on contemporary Europe were discussed. The discussion was divided into three subject areas:

1. On action: landscapes of modernity. This subject area looked at emerging territories and phenomena such as coastal exploitation, new infrastructures and energy production, all of which play a key role in shaping modern landscapes.

2. On knowledge: landscapes of time. This discussion explored the idea of memory of place and the way to study the different layers of time that shape the land and Cultural Landscape.

3. On configuration: interdisciplinary landscapes. This section discussed intervening in the landscape as a way of building crosscutting connections between different disciplines. Participants vindicated the need for a new methodological framework in order to achieve more effective and attentive land action.

Founded by the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille (ENSA-M), the EURAU Promoters Committee includes representatives from the Madrid Higher Technical School of Architecture (ETSAM), the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille, the Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, the Faculté d’Architecture de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles and Istanbul Technical University, among others.