booklaunch HETEROTOPIA AND THE CITY

The department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning, KULeuven
is pleased to invite you to the presentation of the book

Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society

Introduction by the editors Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter
Discussion by Hilde Heynen (chair of the department)
and Rudi Laermans (professor of Sociology, KULeuven)
To be followed by a reception
at the Salons of the Arenberg Castle

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 8 pm
Auditorium De Molen, Kasteelpark Arenberg
(Auditorium De Molen is part of the Arenberg Castle complex and is directly accessible from the Celestijnenlaan)


More about the book:

Heterotopia, literally meaning 'other places', is a rich concept in urban design that describes a world off-center with respect to normal or everyday spaces, one that possesses multiple, fragmented, or even incompatible meanings. The term has had an impact on architectural and urban theory since it was coined by Foucault in the late 1960s but has remained a source of confusion and debate since. Heterotopia and the City seeks to clarify this concept and investigates the heterotopias which exist throughout our contemporary world: in museums, theme parks, malls, holiday resorts, gated communities, wellness hotels, and festival markets.
The book combines theoretical contributions on the concept of heterotopia, including a new translation of Foucault's influential 1967 text, Of Other Spaces, with a series of critical case studies that probe a range of (post-) urban transformations, from the 'malling' of the agora, through the 'gating' of dwelling, to the 'theming' of urban renewal. Wastelands and terrains vagues are explored as sites of promise and resistance in a section on urban activism and transgression. The reader gets a glimpse of the extremes of our dualized, postcivil condition through case studies on Jakarta, Dubai, and Kinshasa. Heterotopia and the City provides a collective effort to reposition heterotopia as a crucial concept for contemporary urban theory and redirects the current debate on the privatization of public space. The book will be of interest to all those wishing to understand the city in the emerging postcivil society and posthistorical era. Planners, architects, cultural theorists, urbanists, and academics will find this a valuable contribution to current critical argument.

Michiel Dehaene is Lecturer in Urbanism at the Eindhoven University of Technology and a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven. His work focuses on the epistemology of urbanism, dispersed urbanization, and the interrelation between formal and informal modes of development.
Lieven De Cauter studied Philosophy and History of Art. He teaches at the department of Architecture of the Leuven University, the media school RITS and the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam. He has published books on contemporary art, modernity, architecture, the city, and politics.