You are invited to the workshop: ‘Mapping Castle Street: an interdisciplinary workshop about the character of the street’, in PLACE NI on November 17-18, 2016.

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Streets are scenes of conflict. They are contested public spaces where fundamentally different people can meet. Architects, planners, designers and policy makers have designed, managed and controlled the way streets are used, occupied and transited. Academics have raised awareness of the value of streets that are diverse, vibrant and inclusive, while urban policy focuses on the commercial value of city streets, and urban designers in their aesthetic and formal qualities. But what makes a good street? Is it the boundaries and thresholds created by buildings binding it? Is it the use of those buildings? Or is it the street’s identity, history and memory?

We will develop a series of layers of analysis including but not limited to: mapping, drawings, diagrams, photographs, interviews, archive work, soundscapes, interviews, and more.

We are not looking for a universal solution to the use, design and management of streets, but a culturally specific array of possibilities that our streets could potentially have. Castle Street is an ideal case study to consider, for it is in the core of the city, it connects very different areas, and above all it is loaded with meaning and potential.

We invite students, academics and professionals of architecture, planning, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, film, media, arts and any other disciplines interested in the analysis of public space.