Defining Space Conference Report
11 - 13th October 2007
The international interdisciplinary conference Defining Space took place in Newman House and the National Gallery of Ireland between October 11th and 13th. Organised by Hugh Campbell from Architecture and Douglas Smith from French and Francophone Studies and funded by the Humanities Institute of Ireland (World-Writing in French Research Strand) and the School of Architecture, Landscape and Civil Engineering, the conference attracted 130 delegates, including more than seventy speakers from over twenty countries and a wide variety of disciplines.
The conference set out to investigate the relevance of the spatial paradigm in theory and practice across the arts and social sciences. Often associated with purist versions of twentieth-century modernism, spatial models of creation and understanding have been denigrated for their neglect of time and history but they arguably remain key to the construction and apprehension of the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In exploring this proposition, papers ranged in theme from the philosophy of space in ancient Greece to the politics and sociology of the modern postcolonial city in Europe and Asia, from the history and theory of architecture to the psychoanalytic exploration of inner space, investigating along the way the spaces of the visual arts and literature. A number of recurring themes emerged: the use of drawing as a means of grasping and constructing space, the importance of empathy to an understanding of modern conceptions of space, the negotiations of place that characterize contemporary urban life.
Organized across two sites in the centre of the city, the conference provided a congenial and stimulating setting for scholars and practitioners from different backgrounds to explore the elusive and contested notion of space, establishing both the divergences and common ground essential to meaningful interdisciplinary dialogue. The event was launched by the Registrar Dr Philip Nolan in Newman House and keynote addresses were given at the National Gallery by Barry Bergdoll, Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Steve Pile, Professor of Human Geography at the Open University and Anthony Vidler, Dean of Architecture at the Cooper Union, New York. Valerie Norton and Pierre Jolivet provided invaluable administrative and technical assistance. An accompanying exhibition, curated by Emmett Scanlon and Sarah Cremin of CAST Architecture, showed how seven young Irish architectural practices responded to the theme of Defining Space. This exhibition re-opens on November 9th in the Red Room in Richview.
Defining Space conference delegates in the Saloon, Newman House.
Pictured at the Defining Space conference held in Newman House in October (l-r): Hugh Campbell, Gary Boyd, Douglas Smith and Anthony Vidler.