Thinking

Spatial
Practices
with + against law

BirkbeckUniversity of London
Birkbeck Institute for Social Research
Birkbeck School of Law
19th June 2015
Malet StreetRoom 414
PhotoChristopher Mark Johnson

Thinking
Spatial
Practices
Across various disciplines, a resurgent interest in
questions of spatial justice is prompted by a diverse
range of developments such as the Arab Spring and
occupy movements, drone warfare, the criminalisation of
squatting in Europe, restriction of the uses of public
space under securitisation, surveillance and disciplinary
architecture, the housing crisis in the UK and elsewhere.

with + against law

This interdisciplinary colloquium explores the specific

role of law, not only in terms of its functions of
disciplining, ordering and controlling, but also in terms
of the possibilities it offers for critical spatial practices.
Law holds a special relationship to spatiality as the latter
is ingrained in its historical formation and logics of
ordering and control.
At the intersection with approaches that focus
predominantly on the so-called negative effects of legal
spatial ordering and control, and posit themselves as
working against the law, we would like to also consider
what positive markers may be offered in the law and with
the law in such modalities of spatial practice and
thought. And this not only in the sense of legal doctrinal
possibilities and established jurisprudence, but crucially
so in terms of encountering the creative force of the
(legal, political and architectural) imagination.

organisers
Thanos Zartaloudis
University of KentSchool of Law
AASchool of Architecture
Baak Ertr
BirkbeckSchool of Law

programme

9:30 - 9:50

registration

9:50 - 10:00 welcome (BISR & organisers)

10:00-11:00 session 1
chair: Thanos Zartaloudis
Adrian Lahoud UCLBartlett School of Architecture
Fallen Cities: Architecture and Reconstruction
Hanna Baumann University of CambridgeDepartment
of ArchitectureCentre for Urban Conflicts Research
The Grey Spaces Behind Jerusalems Wall: Questioning
notions of informality and illegality under occupation
11:00-11:10 coffee/tea break
11:10-12:10 session 2
chair: Thanos Zartaloudis
Platon Issaias UCLBartlett School of Architecture
From Archetypes to Protocols: Projects for Athens
Orsalia Dimitriou GoldsmithsDepartment of Visual
Cultures + University of the ArtsCentral St. Martins
Public Space and Critical Democracy: Insights from Athens
12:10-12:20 coffee/tea break
12:20-13:20 session 3
chair: Baak Ertr
Helen Carr University of KentSchool of Law
Articulating housing justice in contemporary times a
case study of the law and politics of urban housing space
in England and Wales
Lucy Finchett-Maddock University of SussexSchool of Law
Nonlinear Laws of Resistance at the Intersection of
Individual Property

13:20-14:10 lunch
14:10-15:10 session 4
chair: Baak Ertr
Eray ayl UCL History of Art + Bartlett School of
Architecture
Heritage after Catastrophe / amidst Protest / before
Disaster: (Dis)possession, Belonging, Temporality
Ross Exo Adams Iowa State UniversityFaculty of
Architecture
Ubiquitous Law and the Urbanisation of the Body
15:10-15:25 coffee/tea break
15:25-17:00 session 5 & general discussion
chairs/discussants: Thanos Zartaloudis & Baak Ertr
Sarah Keenan BirkbeckSchool of Law
Subversive Property
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos University of
WestminsterSchool of Law
Spatial Justice
17:00-19:00 drinks at the AA bar