From Athenaeum to transition: cities as a cradle of the transformative imagination
The Geneva Athenaeum (the foundations of which house the Braillard Architects Foundation) bears a name that is not entirely trivial. Retracing its history goes back to Adrian, the Roman emperor of the Philhellenes, whose Atheneum housed the arts and letters in honor of the Athenian Golden Age. It is the beginning of a story whose innumerable versions around the world only confirm Pericles’ vision, powerfully expressed in his funeral oration synonymous with the struggle for participatory democracy and civic pride, confirming that it is in the cities that the future can be conceived, developed and realised. It remains to be proven that these are capable of meeting humanity’s greatest challenge, that of the ecological transition.
The conference held by Panos MANTZIARAS will be discussed by Malaïka NAGEL (sociologist, UNIGE) and Dominique BOURG.
This conference takes place in the series Forum of Sociological Research 2020: City and Creativity held by the Institute for Sociological Research (IRS) from the Faculty of Social Sciences (SDS) of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), under the responsibility of Professor Sandro Cattacin and Fiorenza Gamba, in collaboration with the Braillard Foundation and the Urban Sociology Laboratory (LaSUR) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.
The 2020 Forum aims to work on the theme of the “creative city” from a dialogue between researchers in human and social sciences, practitioners from the artistic world and associations as well as players of the Greater Geneva. The conference series addresses the following themes: Innovation and creativity in an urban setting, the rhythms of urban creativity, “Fab labs” in African cities, the birthplace of creative ideas for the ecological transition of cities, urban participation and creativity, cities and artistic production. The conferences take place at specific sites in the Greater Geneva.
