About conference
A condition for sustainable urban development is the vitality of public space, whether physical or virtual. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the continued relevance of street demonstrations and the popularity of festivals, show that staying, moving, meeting and other forms of communication in physical public space are important in everyday life and cannot be replaced by online communication.
The central theme of this year's Architecture and Sustainable Development conference is public space in smaller towns or villages, i.e. outside metropolises and regional centres. We understand public space in a social scientific context, in the broadest sense of the word, as a space intended for the free use of the public, which is not limited to (open) public spaces, but in its physical form also includes routes (corridors) and publicly accessible interiors of institutions or, for example cafes, and in the broadest sense of the word among others also includes the virtual space of social networks. It is in the relationship between public space and architecture that the need for interdisciplinary discussion, which we believe is a prerequisite for the sustainable development of cities and towns, is most evident. As part of this year's conference, we aim to offer students of doctoral study programs and (not only) young researchers an interdisciplinary discussion, expanding beyond the traditional topics of the fields of architecture, construction, and heritage conservation to also include social science topics. Papers may present or be part of case studies related to the conference theme or to the student's dissertation project.
The conference follows on from a series of successful conferences organised by doctoral students from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague in 2014, 2018, 2020 and 2022. This year's conference is also a continuation of the interdisciplinary project supported by TAČR "At Home in the City of UNESCO. Tangible and intangible public space of cities with special monument protection, pilot project Telč", which was implemented in 2019-2022 under the leadership of the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Civil Engineering at CTU Prague. The aim of the year 2024 is to emphasise the interdisciplinary nature of architecture as a field of human action and research and to connect in the discussion a wide range of topics processed by researchers and doctoral students in the fields of architecture, urban planning, construction, social geography, social anthropology, art history and others.
