Imaginations Cross Cultures

Committed to Community Engagement we established our non-profit Imaginations Cross Cultures.

Imaginations outset is to foster greater cross-cultural understanding between young people through creative co-creations across professions, ages and national borders. Activities are focused on making full scale creative responses to how our built environment can best reflect and foster a local cultural identity & better civil society.

Our Summer Schools are catalysts for change where thoughts and ideas are shared and shaped by the future generation. The methodology is based on teamwork, hands-on working, and encouraging open-ended discussions to spark curiosity & grow ideas which can flourish & be harvested by local communities. So far, we have conducted summer schools as far spread as Asia, Middle East and Europe involving over 15 academic institutions. More than 200 students, educators and alumni’s of more than 30 nationalities have joined our schools, and even more have visited the exhibitions.

Under the theme Resilient Cities through Culture 32 students of architecture from 15 countries around the world will come together for two weeks in Seoul, along with tutors from five colleges and international speakers at the school’s symposium day, to discuss the role of culture in sustainable city making. The theme for the UIA congress is Soul of City and it sets out to assess and enhance the unique features of the city of Seoul. While climate change and knowledge-sharing have no country borders sustainable environmental solutions often have to be tailored to specific contexts, climates and cultures in order to succeed. With this objective the summer school will set out to explore how a deeper understanding of a specific culture and community can support sustainable city structures for tomorrow. www.uiasummerschool.org www.imaginaitonscc.org
Re-Imagining the City Museum, Skanderborg, Denmark 2019 WINTER SCHOOL 5 moods, 5 spaces, 5 teams 2 questions & 5 recommendations Over the course of a week we developed an exhibition in a team of seventeen local high school students and eleven Imagineers from all over the world. The group of students, young architects, a scenographer, a graphic designer, an anthropologist and a historian, were asked two key questions, in relation to thinking about the Outside-in: How can a museum become a meeting place in a spread city? and from Inside-Out: What's a museum for young people? The recommendations were developed through five impressions, or 'moods' young people demand from a city museum today - Discovery, Transition, Sharing, Belonging and the Unexpected. These five moods were then built as large scale installations in five spaces within the post office, using 600 meters of canvas, light and five sewing machines. The week culminated with a pop-up exhibition for city residents and the creation of the museums “Young Peoples Advisory Board”. The workshop was the first transformation of the post office towards a new city museum. The ‘winter school’ is a different form of community engagement. We believe student workshops are catalysts for change where thoughts and ideas are shared and shaped by the future generation. The objective for the school was to collaborate and share knowledge across different ages, disciplines and cultures. Our sister non-profit Imaginations Cross Cultures organised the winter school in partnership with Museum Skanderborg, with support from the Danish Art Council and a group of local volunteers. Learn more about Imaginations here: www.imaginationscc.org

Collaborators

  • Aalborg University, Dept. of Architecture and Design, Aalborg

  • Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Faculty of Architecture, Beirut

  • American University Beirut, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape, Beirut

  • American University Cairo, Cairo

  • Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London

  • CKU / DCCD, Danish Centre for Culture and Development

  • Cultural Projects, London

  • Damascus University, Faculty of Architecture, Damascus

  • Danish Architects’ Association, Denmark

  • Danish Arts Council, Denmark

  • Dankook University, Seoul

  • FAU-UFRJ, Rio

  • GAIA-Heritage, Beirut

  • Galmstrup Architects, London

  • University of Genoa, Genoa

  • Hanyang University ERICA, Seoul

  • Hongik University, Seoul

  • Henning Larsen Architects, Levant & Copenhagen

  • TU Berlin University, Landscape architecture and Open Space Planning, Berlin

  • Lebanese American University, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape, Beirut

  • Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Istanbul

  • Museum Skanderborg, Denmark

  • Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture, Copenhagen

  • SCU Skanderborg, Denmark

  • UIA Copenhagen 2023

  • UIA International Union of Architects

  • UIA Rio 2020

  • UIA Seoul 2017

  • University of Seoul

  • USC 10, Skanderborg

  • VGTU, Vilnius

  • Yonsei University, Seoul