Levente Polyak

Rethinking Profession: The Wonderland Platform for European Architecture
Lecture at CANactions Festival
The house of Architect, 7 Grinchenko Borysa str, Kyiv, Ukraine, 01001

http://www.canactions.com/en/sanactions-2013

Crowdsourcing and Community Mapping Vacancy in Budapest
Discussion Leader: Levente Polyak, CEU, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology

Time/Place: April 4, CEU, Nador 11 Rm 616, 12:45pm

The KÉK – Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre, began its Lakatlan (Vacant City) research project in the Fall of 2012. The program including a university course and public lectures focused on the on the phenomena of abandoned properties: the cause of privately or publicly owned properties going vacant, the opportunities and limitations of their reuse or conversion. As part of the project and based on various examples from New York through Hamburg and Vienna, KÉK developed a publicly accessible and editable crowdmap to inventory abandoned properties in Budapest, and they studied the potentials of various building types for conversion or temporary use. In this week’s Media and Change discussion, Levente Polyak will discuss the Budapest project, and we will talk about how the crowdmap and related research raises a variety of questions about open government, the transparency of municipal data, citizen mobilization, data accuracy and the sensitivity of shared information.

More information at
https://lakatlan.crowdmap.com/
http://kek.org.hu/lakatlan/en/
https://www.facebook.com/LakatlanBudapest

Thursday 4 April, 7:00 pm — Friday 10 May 2013, 7:00 pm
Platan Gallery, 1061 Budapest, Andrássy út 32.
Opening of the exhibition: on Thursday, 4 April 2013 at 7 p.m.
Opening speech by Levente Polyák, urbanist, Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre

The Embassy project is a semi-fictional semi-documentary series of photographs of an embassy of an Eastern European country of the former COMECON. The photographs were indeed all taken in a real Eastern European unused embassy, however it has been chosen to modify slightly some of them, in order to produce confusion in the viewer’s mind as to wether what he is watching is true or not. The viewer is thus invited in a slightly Kafkaesque journey through empty offices which become more and more claustrophobic and unreal. In a reference to the Cold War diplomatic habits of manipulation, as well as to the former soviet bloc’s use of photomontage, these photographs are seeminlgly documentary, ergo objective, whereas in reality the viewer will never know if what he sees is true or not, truthful or manipulated.
More details at http://polinst.hu/en/node/8774

A Klauzália célja a helyi értékek feltárása és a közérdekű információk megosztása mellett az, hogy rendelkezzünk saját jövőképpel és irányokat tudjunk megfogalmazni a környék fejlődéséhez. Hamarosan sor kerül a város szívében nyüzsgő Klauzál tér átépítésére. Mi, akik itt élünk, dolgozunk, töltjük időnk nagy részét a Klauzál téren, szeretnénk, ha igényeink, véleményünk és elképzeléseink figyelmet kapnának a térrekonstrukció koncepciójának kidolgozásakor. A Negyed6Negyed7 Fesztivál keretében egy háromnapos workshop-sorozatra várunk minden érdeklődőt, ahol három témában igyekszünk ütköztetni véleményeinket, összegyűjteni ötleteinket és javaslatainkat:

1. március 27. 17-20h, Kisüzem: A városi zöldterületekről Szabó Gyöngyvérrel (Magyar Urbanisztikai Társaság)
2. március 28. 17-20h, Szimpla kert: A helyi közlekedésről Édes Balázzsal (Budapesti Közlekedési Központ) és a paradoks urbaniszitkai munkacsoporttal
3. március 29. 17-20h, Sirály: A lakatlan ingatlanokról Szerdahelyi-Németh Klárával (Fiatal Urbanisták Társasága)

Részletek:
A Facebook esemény oldalán és a
Negyed6Negyed7 Fesztivál oldalán

This year the Budapest Architecture Film Days celebrates its 5th birthday. The mission of the Film Days, initiated by KÉK – Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre in 2007, is to use the medium of film to highlight the most subtle processes in architecture, design and urban development. Do you live in a building? Do you watch films? Then you’ll attend the Architecture Film Days.This year, the festival proposes the richest and most diverse program of its half-decade existence to those interested in architecture, design and cities.

The 4-day event opens with a portrait of one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, Oscar Niemeyer, and the following days offer films about desert architecture, the infrastructure problems of megalopolises, the role of water and the sea in urban life, Shanghai’s early skyscrapers by László Hugyecz, the most innovative and infamous examples of contemporary architecture and urbanism as well as about the recent transformation of Budapest. Beyond this, the Film Days gives a particular focus to the question of vacant buildings: a selection of the festival’s films depict the life of office towers, hotels, entire neighborhoods after the vanishing of their reason of existence. Besides the films and Q&A sessions with directors, the festival also includes a live Italian architecture video-jockey performance, as well as an exclusive screening in one of Budapest’s future subway stations, combined with an architectural tour.

http://kek.org.hu/filmnapok/en/
https://www.facebook.com/BudapestArchitectureFilmDays
https://www.facebook.com/events/468328596556378/?notif_t=plan_user_joined

Köszönjük mindenkinek, aki jelentkezett az 5. Budapesti Építészeti Filmnapok felhívására!

Submissions for the 5th edition of the Budapest Architecture Film Days are now closed! Thank you to all the film makers who have taken the time to submit their projects to the festival!