Registration for Books, Birds, and Pioneers is now open! 

When? 2 March 2016 (Wed), 1:30pm

Where? Research Division Seminar Room (AS7 06-42), NUS Kent Ridge Campus

How? RSVP with the title “LOSSAU” to fasscities@nus.edu.sg by 26 February 2016.

 

ABOUT THE EVENT

Located on former Knights Templar land, Tempelhof Airport in the southeast of Berlin has a rich history. The colossal terminal building was built during the Nazi era as part of Albert Speer’s Germania plans. After the end of WW II, the airport became one of the most crucial sites of the cold war when so-called raisin bombers sustained the inhabitants of West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade. In the 1990s it was decided to concentrate the national and international air traffic in Berlin and Brandenburg onto the site of the former GDR airport in Schönefeld (Brandenburg), and in 2008 the airport closed all operations. In my presentation I will address the question of how the Senate Department for Urban Development aimed at transforming the huge inner-city premises into a ‘lab for urban life in the 21st century’ – and why the plan (provisionally) failed.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Julia Lossau is professor of urban geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on the symbolic production of places and spaces, particularly in the context of postcolonial discourses. At present she is particularly interested in how ontologies of late modernism are translated into ontologies of the Anthropocene, and how interconnectivity, transnationalism, questions of belonging etc. are being reframed by – and rematerialise in – society. Previous research examined the uses of art in public spaces as well as representations of nature in urban ecology. Books include The Uses of Art in Public Space (London, New York: Routledge, 2014, co-edited with Quentin Stevens) and Perspectives in Urban Ecology. Studies of ecosystems and interactions between humans and nature in the metropolis of Berlin (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer, 2011, co-edited with Wilfried Endlicher et al.).