‘Main Street is almost all right’ wrote Robert Venturi promoting the messy vitality of the built environment of the ordinary. The ambiguity of society, its causality and its improvisations meant the acknowledgement of a diversity of practices: top-down interventions + subcultures + minority expressions + subversive acts + … Redefining the common goods, their ethics, their aesthetics and their economics start with writing stories of architecture that encapsulate the manifold experiences of the city. Thus, an architectural task in which space design and design of a new collective dream, myth or scenario about who we are and what we desire to be is interrelated. Volume 19: Is identity the issue?

the Masters of Intervention event with a lecture by Nader Vossoughian, titled Happy City the next issue of Volume ‘Architecture of Hope‘ will be presented at Felix Meritis (Amsterdam):

Sunday 5 april 2009
14.00 – 17.00
Teekenzaal – Felix Meritis, Amsterdam
Special Masterclass at P!ONEER

Can we build a happy city? Can we engineer happiness?
A Masterclass on creative industry, social cohesion, participatory planning and creating new worlds
What is left of the highmodernist ideals? How do they translate into the Wijkaanpak,the national push to uplift the Dutch ghettos? And what instruments have we got to engineer society and change people in their beliefs and behavior?
Nader Vossoughian wrote on the global polis and its engineer of happiness Otto Neurath. He has a strong vision on the knowledge economy, how it creates ignorance and intelligence. Is ignorance bliss? Or do we set course to develop a responsible participatory community? What is the ethics of urban transformation?

Free entry for applicants for this program, reservation is necessary: maakbaarheid@partizanpublik.nl

For more information on the Masters of Intervention go to engineeringsociety.wordpress.com [NL]