Dean Robert Shibley to lead conversation on the future of cities at Chicago Architecture Biennial
"Shaping the City: Forum for Sustainable Cities and Communities" to take place Dec. 10, 2021, at the Chicago Cultural Center
Dean Robert G. Shibley, FAIA, FAICP, is among a group of internationally regarded architects, designers, urban planners, educators and policy makers invited to participate in a conversation on the future of cities at the Chicago Architecture Biennial on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. The "Shaping the City: Forum for Sustainable Cities and Communities" program is organized by the European Cultural Centre in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Shaping the City: Forum for Sustainable Cities and Communities
Friday, December 10
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E Washington St.
Chicago, IL 60602
Now in its third iteration, Shaping the City held its first two editions in Venice, Italy, in parallel with the Venice Architecture Biennale. This year, the theme of Shaping the City is explored through the social lens of architects and urban planners within our contemporary world. It focuses on social issues in the city, urban inequity, the displacement of communities, new architectural values, and spatial identity.
Dean Robert G. Shibley will moderate the "Re-imagining the City" panel as part of the "Shaping the City" forum, set for Friday, Dec. 10, in Chicago. The event is organized by the European Cultural Centre in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Dean Shibley, who was also a featured participant in the 2018 Shaping the City program, will moderate the "Re-imagining the City" session, to take place on Friday, Dec. 10 at 3.00pm - 7.00pm (EST).
Taking into special consideration issues of inclusion and equity at the urban scale, Shibley will open the panel with a presentation exploring the potential of university-city partnerships in city-making using the School's transformative engagement with the City of Buffalo as a case study. That relationship, carried out in partnership with the region's citizens and community leaders over the course of the past 50 years, has shaped the urban landscape through hundreds of acts of design, making, planning and building while also fostering life-changing experiential learning for our students.
More on the "Shaping the City" program
The 2021 edition of "Shaping the City" in Chicago follows the program's first two iterations at the Venice Architecture Biennale
According to event organizers, "Shaping the City" recognizes the significant role urban planning and design play in molding the interaction of people with their cities and their wellbeing. The forum sets forward new thoughts around the rights to the city, through a spatial, pragmatic, yet inclusive and sustainable approach. Shaping the City 2021 looks to tackle these themes comparing completely different approaches in international cities, namely in Europe and the Americas.
Additional highlights of the event include:
- David Brown, the artistic director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, will deliver the keynote address and inaugurate the in-person forum taking place at the Chicago Cultural Center.
- Session 1 | Architecture for the People / 9.30am - 2.00pm (EST)
- Session 2 | Re-imagining the City / 3 pm - 7 pm (EST)
Learn more about the School's transformative work in Buffalo
The School of Architecture and Planning has received international recognition for its community-as-classroom engagement with the City of Buffalo. The School has been featured twice in the Time Space Existence exhibition organized by ECC and held in conjunction with the Venice Architecture Biennale.
In 2018, the School debuted its documentary film, "See It Through Buffalo," exploring the diverse urban landscapes of Buffalo and the School's work within them over the past 50 years.
The School's 2021 exhibition, "Buffalo Constructing Buffalo: From Olmsted to Van Valkenburgh," showcased the world-class park emerging on Buffalo’s waterfront, zeroing in on the multi-year civic planning process shaping the park’s design and the city's history of citizen-driven planning innovation supporting that work. That process was led by the UB Regional Institute, building on hundreds of acts of planning, design and building in the city led by our faculty and students and pursued in collaboration with the citizens and community leaders of Buffalo.