Thursday 2nd to Saturday 4th of July 2009. University of Brighton, School of Architecture and Design, 
Interior Architecture and Urban Studies.

An abiding concern for designers of interior space is the way that buildings and places are used or occupied. Issues of inhabitation, enclosure and containment are of critical importance in this new century and an understanding of relationships between politics, place and space is indispensable for any sort of practice today. Researchers, practitioners and students in the fields of interiors, art, architecture and spatial design must be open to alternative readings of territory and a range of spatial practices. This three-day conference will be concerned with the motivations, forces, constraints and drives in design for occupation.



Fred Scott states that "The function of buildings in human affairs is more correctly described through patterns or rituals of occupation. Buildings will otherwise resist description in terms of more precise functions; as James Gowan has sometimes commented to me, 'I can eat a sandwich in any size of room'. The intended fit between function and space can be elusive, unfocused, but the image is vivid, which is the reason why the idea of obsolescence is so uncertain with regards to buildings" (Fred Scott, 'On Altering Architecture', Routledge, 2008).



Occupation may be benign or may be achieved through the acquisition of territory by force - processes of control of people and places. Occupation may also be a state of mind where daily routines and activity are curtailed, moulded and adapted to a particular environment. Equally, spaces may be composed or formed through processes and layers of inhabitation. The conference theme, 'Occupation' will address the friction and negotiation that exists between built space and Inhabitants.



Presentations will be divided into four areas in order to open ways of thinking about designing for occupation. Contributions are invited from designers, artists, practitioners, teachers, students and all those interested in the disciplines of architecture, interiors and spatial design, around the following themes:



Occupation and Place


The relationship of an occupier to a particular place, site specificity, issues of purchase, ownership, possession and inhabitation, the proportion or extent to which a property is occupied or used.



Occupation and Time


Time and transience, temporal occupation through the marking out of territory, work and employment, ways of keeping busy, obsolescence, alternative ways of occupying territory (squatting, alteration).



Occupation and Appropriation


States of forced control, the state of being occupied, claims to property and territory, acts of dispossession and exclusion, the occupation of interstitial or unusual spaces.



Occupation Memory and Imagination


Acts of consciousness or forms of belief that lead to occupation and/or the redrawing of boundaries, occupation and memory, building an occupation through representation or making a claim on imagined space or territory, film and virtual and space.



These categories are loosely held and may easily overlap in the presented papers.


Names of keynote speakers will be confirmed shortly.  A one-week student event - 'Student Occupation' - will run concurrently with the conference and participation will be invited from students in the UK and abroad. Conference delegates will be invited to participate in a review of work produced.



Conference Presentation Format


The invited papers will be twenty minutes oral presentation. The conference language will be English.

Data Show - Completed papers of between 3000 - 4000 words, conforming to the template that will be supplied to selected authors.



Conference Dates


The conference will last for three days from Thursday 2nd to Saturday 4th of July 2009.



It is intended that a book based on the conference papers will be published after the event.



Costs


The cost for attendance at the conference will be £340 for three days, including a conference dinner at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.


Early Registration for the conference, (available until 11 May 2009) £300


Student concession (not including conference dinner) £160


Single day attendance (not including dinner) £100




A website containing more information about the conference is under construction. In the interim period please contact



Terry Meade or Irene Smith


University of Brighton
School of Architecture and Design


Mithras House


Lewes Road


Brighton BN2 4AT


+44 (0) 1273 64 2366


t.meade@brighton.ac.uk


i.a.smith@brighton.ac.uk