The Department of Architecture, the Department of Anthropology, and the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to announce a joint conference on Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements, October 19 - 21, 2000. Participants will explore the significance of patterns of settlement and spatial organization as they shape and embody social formation and world view. Emphasis will be placed on the common ground between architectural theories about place and dwelling and current research in anthropology about settlements and cultural landscapes. The conference will bring together scholars and practitioners in both disciplines who are interested in the relationship between form, space, and cultural meaning. Original contributions from anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, planners, and theorists will be presented. A short text by Joseph Rykwert and Tony Atkin summarizes the intentions for discussion.

The conference papers will investigate settlement practice, theory, and metaphor in building and material culture. There will be studies of geomancy and divination as determinants of traditional settlement forms, symbolic and productive landscapes, and the interplay of climate, social relationships, and ideology with settlement patterns and structures. Presentations will include Geography and Settlement in Ancient Egypt, Ritual Organization in the Ancient Indus Cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harrappa, Etruscan Boundaries and Prophecy, and Mayan Cosmology and Spatial Distribution. Case studies on settlement practice in Dahomey, Zuni, and other surviving indigenous cultures will be presented, as well as examples of extreme settlement conditions in the Russian Arctic and Saharan Oasis. Settlement in periods of rapid social and economic change, such as our own, will be examined in presentations about Architecture and Power, Modernist Ideology and Settlement, Post-Mao China, Settlement Form and Public Housing, and e-Urbanization.


The primary site for the conference session will be the auditorium at the Christian Association, 3601 Locust Walk, on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Two AIA/CES Learning Units are available for each session of the conference. All sessions are open to the public and free of charge. Funding has been provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Center for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Please contact Tony Atkin at the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, 215-898-5728 or settlements@pobox.upenn.edu for more information.