Thursday, June 9, 2022
Held Online via Zoom
Language：English Only
Registration required（Maximum 300 people can join）
Application Deadline：Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Organized by：Tokyo Institute of Technology, Future of Humanity Research Center (FHRC)
Contact：fhrc@ila.titech.ac.jp

The new urban study group that will start in June 2022 at Future of Humanity Research Center, is usually a closed study group, but for the first meeting only, it will be an open event: screening and lecture, inviting Professor Matthew Gandy from Cambridge University.  Please note that the language will be English only.

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Part 1  16:15-17:35
– screening (71min.)
"Natura Urbana“ (2019) directed by Professor Matthew GANDY
(with English subtitle)
※Prof. Kumiko KIUCHI will give a brief introduction to the film.
※A brief description and synopsis of the film (in Japanese) will be shared before the screening.

Part 2  18:00-20:00
– lecture (40 min.)
   Professor Matthew GANDY (University of Cambridge)
(English-only)
- discussion
   Commentator: Professor Masato DOHI (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
   Facilitator：Professor Kumiko KIUCHI (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
※Part 2 will begin with welcome address from Prof. Asa Ito, Director of FHRC.
※Questions from the audience will be accepted during the discussion.

• Please register HERE or scan the QR code:
  

Professor Matthew Gandy will present arguments from his new book on urban nature by exploring a series of different vantage points for the study of socio-ecological assemblages in urban space.  He will reflect on the possibilities for a new conceptual synthesis that combines observational approaches with urban political ecology and the recognition of non-human others within the ecological pluriverse.

About Professor Matthew Gandy:
Matthew Gandy is Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge and an award-winning documentary film maker.  His research interests span landscape, infrastructure, and urban biodiversity.  He has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York; the University of California, Los Angeles; the Technical University, Berlin; the Humboldt University, Berlin; and the University of the Arts, Berlin.  His books include Concrete and clay: reworking nature in New York City (The MIT Press, 2002), Hydropolis: Wasser und die Stadt der Moderne (Campus, 2006, co-editor), Urban constellations (jovis, 2011, editor), The fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination (The MIT Press, 2014), The acoustic city (jovis, 2014, co-editor), Moth (Reaktion, 2016), The botanical city (jovis, 2020, co-editor), and Natura urbana: ecological constellations in urban space (The MIT Press, 2022).  He is currently a fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study and is writing his next book on urban refugia.

About the film:
“Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin” explores the potential of spontaneous and marginal nature and its diversity and heterogeneity in urban space in unfolding the socio-political history of the wasteland or “Brachen” in Berlin. Its unique insight into non-design approaches to urban nature has received acclaims in human geography, urban studies and ecology.

FHRC Members in this article：

Dr. Kumiko Kiuchi
Dr. Asa Ito