Reports 35

Urban Morphology (2013) 17(1), 35-44 © International Seminar on Urban Form, 2013 ISSN 1027-4278

Nineteenth International Seminar on Urban Form, Delft, TheNetherlands, 16-19 October 2012

The School of Architecture and the Built Environ-ment on the campus of Delft University ofTechnology (TU Delft) in The Netherlandsprovided the setting for ISUF 2012. Pre-conferencestrolls around the scenic medieval city of Delftrevealed a distinct regional morphology defined bya network of canals and drawbridges. Portions ofthe city wall and east gate, ‘Osstport’, remain assome of the earliest urban elements amongpredominantly three-storey medieval layers. Thecityscape is punctuated by cathedral spires. A largecentral market square contains Delft’s Renaissancestyle City Hall, ‘Stadius’, and the ‘Nieuwe Kerk’(new cathedral), completed in the late-fifteenthcentury. A few quarters of the city that weredestroyed either in a seventeenth-century gun-powder explosion or during the Second World Warhave been significantly reconstructed during thepost-war period. This newcomer to TheNetherlands was impressed upon arrival at therailway station (as was ISUF President MichaelConzen), by prolific vertical racks of bicycles,Delft’s preferred mode of transportation.

TU Delft’s School of Architecture and theEuropean Association of Architectural Education(EAAE) collaborated with ISUF to sponsor theconference, which addressed the overarching themeof ‘New urban configurations’. Papers weresolicited under the conference sub-themes of‘Innovation in building typology’, ‘Infrastructureand the city’, ‘Complex urban projects’, ‘Greenspaces: the city and the territory’, and, speakingmost directly to the geographical context of theconference, ‘Delta urbanism: living with water inthe urban deltas’. Departing from ISUF conferencetradition, submissions concerning morphologicalresearch were rejected if they did not directlysubscribe to one of the themes. Presumably theorganizers decided not to offer an open category inorder to accommodate both the heavy subscriptionto conference sub-themes and an unusually fullschedule of plenary speakers.

In tandem with the conference, the School ofArchitecture hosted an exhibition entitled ‘Renewalof urban renewal’, featuring significant urbandesign interventions in the cities of Leiden, TheHague, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Exhibitedworks in the school’s forum space addressed thetopics of industrial inheritance, neighbourhoodeconomy, traffic infrastructure and greeninfrastructure. The works also served as the focus

for panel presentations by design professionals andgovernment planning officials during the entirety ofthe first afternoon of the conference. Invitedplenary speakers Henk Engel, Julian Lewis, PaoloFusi, Paul Veremeulen and Sotira Kornaopoulouoffered perspectives concerning the renewal ofurban renewal and urban design as well asprocesses for contemporary urban intervention.The School’s unique ‘forum’ space, as retrofittedwithin the late-nineteenth-century buildingenvelope, provided the context for the exhibition’sofficial opening as well as several conference boxlunches and evening receptions (Figure 1).

The ISUF portion of the conference opened witha symposium on the international heritage,scholarship, and research methodologies of SaverioMuratori (Figure 2). Speakers Nicola Marzot,Sylvain Malfoy, Ivor Samuels, and Pier GiorgioGerosa contributed perspectives on Muratori’scontributions to urban morphology as well ascontinuing concerns about the relative obscurity ofhis work outside of Italy. A common threadthroughout the symposium presentations was theneed for more direct access to Muratori’s thoughtsvia a common language – whether metaphysical orliteral in the form of more effective publications inEnglish and other languages. Suggested strategiesincluded further biographical research, systematicreview of archival manuscripts and drawings, andcritical translation. A concluding roundtable led byGiancarlo Cataldi, reflected on the need to transferuseful tools that can be derived from Muratori’swork from the academy directly to contemporarypractice in design and planning fields. Panelistsagreed that in terms of what would be best for thecity, Muratori’s focus on ‘collective intentionality’and interpretation of inherited fabric, in lieu of theindividual designers’ quest for novelty, wouldprobably support a richer platform forcollaborative, interdisciplinary research andcontemporary urban practice. It would seem thatthe bulk of this year’s conference participants,many of whom were design and planningpractitioners and educators, could benefit frommore direct and relevant access to Muratori’sworks. The challenge, as presented by IvorSamuels, is to ‘find avenues, above individualschools of thought, to bridge complexity andmultiple disciplines, in order to disseminatemorphology into practice’. In his keynote address,Jean Castex highlighted Muratori’s reverence to

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‘the city as the only model’ in his own design andplanning of new interventions and architecturaltypologies. Such reverent practices appear to belacking in most contemporary grand gesture

approaches to urban design intervention, includingsome of the case study projects presented at theconference.

Of potentially equal importance to the current

Figure 1. A social gathering in the forum space.

Figure 2. The panel session on the work of Saverio Muratori.

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generation of scholarship and practice in the designfields is the broadened effort to disseminate theseminal works of M.R.G. Conzen and to interprettheir relevance for contemporary practice. Amongother strategies, translations of his works areneeded to extend their influence. Gian LuigiMaffei, Giuseppe Strappa and Giancarlo Cataldidiscussed their recently released translation intoItalian of Alnwick, Northumberland: a study intown-plan analysis. Their keynote panel reflectedon the value of Conzen’s work to ‘analyticalprocesses as applied to existing settings’, as well ashis contributions to ‘understanding formativeprocesses in the town plan’.

In his keynote address entitled ‘cross-culturalurban morphology’, Michael Conzen highlightedthe value of interpreting and comparing ‘plan units’as shaped by significantly different culturesthroughout the world. Conzen posited that, as theThird World continues to undergo rapidurbanization, this new topic of cross comparison inmorphological research is currently underserved.He treated us to the potentially rich forum that suchcollaborative research can offer by sharing initialfindings from his own comparative research onChinese cities and Italian cities in collaborationwith ISUF Secretary-General Kai Gu. Aninteresting side note is that both scholars wereabout to head for Como, Italy, for a post-conferenceresearch trip. Their agenda included completion offield documentation activities, highlighting thecontinuing value of place-based research usingConzenian methodologies.

A number of TU Delft members presented theirresearch and practice from varying disciplinaryperspectives concerning topics as diverse as the‘second urban revolution’, ‘metabolic flows withinurban configurations’, ‘complexity theory’, ‘thecontemporary role of design in complex urbanprojects’, and ‘design challenges of rising sea levelsfacing delta regions’. Presenters on these topicsincluded Juval Portugali, Dirk Sijmons, Kees Kahnand Han Meyer.

Parallel paper sessions subscribing to eachconference sub-theme were sandwiched betweenkeynote presentations throughout Days 2 and 3 ofthe conference. Given the unusual number ofplenary speakers, time was compressed for papersessions, allowing each presenter only 10 minutes.It was obviously impossible to attend all concurrentsessions or to provide a comprehensive review ofthem. Under the theme of ‘Complex urbanprojects’, several papers addressed strategies toregenerate public space in contexts as diverse asLisbon, Barcelona, and Queensland. Many papers

offered unique frameworks and processes foranalysing urban contexts using state-of-the-arttechnological tools for data acquisition andanalysis. They demonstrated that applications ofnew computer technologies such as remote sensingfor morphological research projects can enhancecapacity to interpret an expanded areal extent. Incontexts in which rapid urbanization and associatedgeographical expansion are being experienced, thisbecomes essential. In terms of the researchprocess, emphasis in a majority of works presentedwas placed on novelty. Efforts to build on long-standing precedents for morphological analysiswere lacking. Notable exceptions included a studyon ‘Rehabitat project in Barcelona’ and acomparative study of greater Miami andQueensland. The paper sessions, which largelyfeatured young scholars, left several establishedmorphological researchers questioning whether thevalue of traditional analytical methods is beingadequately communicated to the next generation.

Papers on the theme ‘Green spaces: the city andthe territory’, featured collaborative morphologicalstudies by Brazilian researchers of urban parks inBelo Horizonte and other Brazilian cities usingConzenian methods. Other notable papersaddressed conversion of vacated land in shrinkingcities, such as Detroit, and associated reuse forurban agriculture and incorporation of solartechnology in urban environments.

In a late change to the programme a session wasadded on the art of teaching urban morphology.Peter Larkham discussed the paucity ofpublications about morphological pedagogy, theEurocentric nature of those case studies currentlyavailable for use as teaching resources, and theabsence of teaching as an ISUF conference focussince 2003 in Trani. Larkham proposed severalstrategies to improve the situation: for example,those teaching courses in urban morphology couldpost syllabi on ISUF’s website, and a dialoguegroup could be formed to prepare case studies andother teaching materials that are relevant acrossmultiple cultures and disciplines. In a relatedpresentation, Terry Slater shared his use of a seriesof course related walking tours to introducebeginning college students to the history andphysical elements of their surrounding builtenvironment.

During the closing session, questions wereraised for further contemplation about the relativevalue of partnering with other scholarly organi-zations for future ISUF meetings and specificallyEAAE. In terms of urban morphology, the organi-zational liaisons between ISUF 2012 and the EAAE

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afforded a potentially rich forum for dialoguesurrounding shared interests in the physicaldimensions and characteristics of urban environ-ments and developments. ISUF membershipaspires to promote the value that urban morphologyholds for urban practitioners. Such a liaison has thepotential to enhance capacity for systematicinterpretation of urban environments prior to designand planning of new urban interventions.Disappointingly, much of the conference dialoguedrifted away from a focus on urban morphologyand more directly into the realms of urban designand practice. Consequently, the new collaborationexperienced some mismatched expectations.Regular ISUF participants suggested the need forstronger guidelines for abstract solicitation andsubmission to ensure that papers more directlyaddress urban morphology. This participant wouldargue that while some clarity of purpose and focusof ISUF’s mission was lost in translation, theexposure that new participants from the disciplinesand practices of architecture and urban design

received to key streams of morphological thoughtwas potentially worth the compromise … this onetime.

Two post-conference excursions explored thecities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. I joined theAmsterdam group led by Meta Berghauser Pont,along with the Samuels, Gu, Conzen and theWhitehands, among others (Figure 3). Weembarked on a 6 km walking tour of large urbanprojects in the form of new and adapted housingdevelopments along the canal front. From strategicvista points we could observe shifts in scale and usealong the working canal. We then circled backthrough largely medieval neighbourhoods towardsthe railway station and on to our destinations acrossthe globe.

Wendy R. McClure, Architecture Program, Collegeof Art and Architecture, University of Idaho, POBox 442451, Moscow, ID 83844-2451, USA. E-mail: wmcclure@uidaho.edu

Figure 3. The Amsterdam excursion in progress.