Probral – Politics

INTENTIONS – INTERVENTIONS – EFFECTS

Since the beginning of the 1990’s we can observe how public space in many cities is increasingly used as a stage for action in order to achieve various goals differing greatly from each other. In this sense, actions are being increasingly taken as an answer to peripherization and privatization of traditionally urban functions which improve the character of the inner cities as locations of leisure and consumption. While the spatial surrounding of particular institutions of the state or for cultural use are expanded as a public sphere in the sense of an altered form of representation, simultaneously, remote quarters and such which are evaded by the majority society experience interventions which are intended to increase social integration.
This practice is interpreted by us as an element of a new quality of urbanistic practice, a new quality, which can not only be observed in Europe, but also in Latin America and other regions of the world:

The political agenda towards public space has experienced a significant expansion during the past one and a half decades, under the most different contextual circumstances. With this broader spectrum of goals and locations of action, simultaneously, a remarkable diversification of interventional instruments for the redesign of public places occurs.

The binational research project concentrates the works of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers and professors from the field of urban research and is supported by the DAAD and its Brazilian counterpart CAPSES as a project oriented scientist exchange program.

Cooperating institutions:
• PROURB – Institute for Postgraduate Urbanistic Studies, Facultade de Arquitectura e Urbanismo, Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro
• IfEU – Institute for European Urban Studies, Faculty of Architecture, Bauhaus-University Weimar

Project leadership:
Professor Max Welch Guerra, Weimar
Professor Lilian Fessler Vaz, Rio de Janeiro

Brazilian research team
• Prof. Luciana da Silva Andrade
• Prof. Sonia Le Cocq d’Oliveira
• Prof. Margareth da Silva Pereira
• Prof. Denise B. Pinheiro Machado
• Prof. Roberto Segre
• Prof. Lilian Fessler Vaz

• Carlos Fernando de Souza Leão Andrade
• Claudio Antonio Lima Carlos
• Humberto Kzure Cerqueira
• Rodrigo Cury Paraizo
• Mario Roberto Trompowsky

German research team
• Prof. Hildegard Barz-Malfatti
• Jun.-Professor Dr. Frank Eckardt
• Prof. Dr. Max Welch Guerra

• Sabine Knierbein
• Anne Jordan
• Günseli Filiz Hatice
• Anja Steglich

Preliminary duration:
January 2005 to December 2006, prolonged until December 2007

Further information:
www.uni-weimar.de/architektur/raum/forschung/probral.htm

Contact:
Sabine Knierbein sabine.knierbein[at]archit.uni-weimar.de