Statements
The Institute for European Urban Studies instructs and teaches students to become local and international experts for the urban space in its international study programmes at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. Here, the spatial competences of professions in planning and design is considered with comprehensive questions about current urban development in an interdisciplinary way. The urban culture in European regions as well as their local perspectives in an international context are a main focus of thoughtful regard. The four professors of European Urban Studies position themselves with different but complementary views.
Professorship Urban Studies and Social Research
Prof. Dr. Frank Eckardt
Contact: frank.eckardt@uni-weimar.de
Web: www.uni-weimar.de/architektur/jsdg/
Statement - European Urban Studies aim towards research and education in which the endeavor is the further development of the individual professional discipline via training of additional or in-depth competence:
- Analytical competence in the framework of interdisciplinary urban research
- Capability of working in the context of complex urban development processes
- Advanced knowledge of the four disciplines of European Urban Studies
- In-depth knowledge of similarities and differences of European historic urban development
- Intensive understanding of the process of European unification and its spatially relevant correlations
- Reinforcement of professional and country-specific situation-based knowledge in at least one additional European country
- Multilingual collaboration ability
- Multidisciplinary team work ability
- Social competence for strategies of conflict resolution, consensus and communication
Professorship Spatial Planning and Spatial Research
Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Max Welch Guerra
Contact: max.welch@uni-weimar.de
Web: www.uni-weimar.de/architektur/raum/
Statement - "European Urban Studies" is the discipline of the European city, which is basically understood as a concept of the urban policy field: it focuses on the ideal type of cities in Europe and its particular characteristics, especially in distinction to the US-American city. The actual focus of the concept of European city depends on the state of art in current political and academic discourse.
At our chair for spatial planning and research, we consider the European city at first regarding morphological, functional and socio-spatial aspects such as built compactness, mixed use and social integration. In addition, it is the political dimension that is equally important to us: Despite all the differences between Lissabon and Moscow, Palermo and Trondheim, the societies in Europe far more than those of other continents claim to steer urban development via public planning processes and do not surrender it to market forces in the same extent as we can observe for instance in North America. Contemporary urban planning has been developed in Europe and continues to receive its most valuable impulses from Europe. This applies equally to regional planning and policies of spatial order. The EU is in the process of continuing this iridescent path of spatial developmental rationality.
The contribution of our chair for spatial planning and research to European Urban Studies lies in making students familiar with
• the morphological, functional and social as well as the political principles of the European city,
• as well as with the manifold instruments which enable us to analyze, plan and steer the development of the European city.
Professorship Construction Management and Construction Economy
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Nentwig
Contact: bernd.nentwig@uni-weimar.de
Web: http://www.uni-weimar.de/cms/index.php?id=17268
Statement -
Professorship Heritage Conservation and Architectural History
Prof. Dr. Hans-Rudolf Meier
Contact: hans-rudolf.meier@uni-weimar.de
Web: http://www.uni-weimar.de/cms/architektur/dmbg/professur.html
Statement - European Urban Studies relate to the topos of the so-called European City, which is essentially characterised by a conspicuous and tangible presence of history in everyday urban life. Dealing with the city in terms of European Urban Studies thus presupposes the capacity to understand the city’s historicity: We are required to appropriately decipher, read and detect the historical traces in order to use them as a potential for the future in a meaningful way. It is in this sense that the disciplines of architectural history and heritage conservation have to be regarded as fundamental for the research field of European Urban Studies.
Building and architectural history attempt to convey knowledge and methods that help us understand buildings and structures of the past. Its main concern is to explore the history of architecture and urban patterns. Heritage conservation (and for our purposes especially urban heritage conservation) is concerned with recognizing, designating and exploring considerable buildings, ensembles and structures worthy of preservation. We are thus required to communicate these particularities and to strive for the advancement of this built environment while still keeping conservation in mind. In doing so, we need to understand history and its relics in all its complexity and therefore need to act in a way that helps us retain as many future options as possible. Our professorship makes a particular effort towards understanding the European City in all its diversity of consecutive, coexisting and opposing concepts – while nonetheless bearing in mind the very historicity of our own concepts and ideas.
